


The One Where Peter is Related to Tony

by marvel_cinematic_universe_fan



Series: You're my whaaa? [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Michelle Jones, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Peter Parker, Dialogue borrowed from Ultimate Spider-Man, Everyone is a good bro, Except Norman Osborn Justin Hammer and Thaddeus Ross, F/M, Gen, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Mystery, Norman Osborn taken from ultimate spider-man, Norman Osborn's A+ parenting, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, So in other words Peter is going to go through some shit, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28851003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvel_cinematic_universe_fan/pseuds/marvel_cinematic_universe_fan
Summary: When he was just 2 years old, Edwin Stark was taken from his home, never to be seen again.  Tony Stark and Pepper Potts never thought they would see Edwin again, until a boy named Peter Parker has his prints put through the system.What they don't know is that their long lost son had just acquired Spider powers and was in the process of being hunted by a maniac named Norman Osborn.  Watch as Peter tries to stop Norman Osborne, Natasha tries to determine how exactly Peter fell into May and Ben Parker's hands, while Tony and Pepper deal with the news that their son has finally been found.
Relationships: Ben Parker/May Parker (Spider-Man), Clint Barton & Pepper Potts & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanoff & Tony Stark, Everyone & Everyone, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: You're my whaaa? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921378
Comments: 79
Kudos: 167
Collections: Peter Parker is Tony Starks Child





	1. Prologue

Pepper stared at the pregnancy test in her hand, mentally willing that one, annoying, horizontal red line to disappear. Of course it didn’t disappear, and from the looks of the other two pregnancy tests stowed into the depths of her purse, the unimaginable had happened, Pepper was pregnant.

Pepper stood up, fixed her ponytail, and put her game face on. She was going to fake it till she made it, at least until work ended. Then she was free to totally break down and determine what to do next.

Her high-heels clacked on the linoleum flooring as Pepper strode into her office with fake confidence. She could do this. Pepper made a checklist in her head of everything she had to remember in order for the last two hours of the day to move on smoothly.

1.Make sure Tony is at least under an hour late to his board meeting.

2.Prepare pamphlets for said meeting.

3.Prep the R&D department for new interns coming in.

4.And most importantly, don’t mention or even think about the incident.

That incident being the very thing that had dumped her into this mess, Pepper found it almost impossible not to think about it. She buried the thought deep in her mind. If she was to last the day, she couldn’t think about what had happened 2 months ago.

Pepper’s plan went out the window when she walked into her office. Because there, standing awkwardly near her desk, was her boss, Tony Stark.

He was anxiously fiddling with her paper weight. Pepper was surprised Tony was here, and looking presentable with a nice suit and combed hair no less. He would be early for his meeting though…

‘No, he’s probably not here to talk about the incident, don’t think about that,’ Pepper thought to herself as she straightened her posture and walked in. She could deal with this.

Tony immediately stood up as soon as he saw her. “Ah, Miss Potts, I just came by here to uh,”

“Mr.Stark,” Pepper sat down on her chair and plastered on a fake smile, “What are you doing here?”

Judging by his awkwardness, Pepper could already guess. She inwardly groaned to herself. She could not do this. Why did Tony have to pick today of all days to suddenly stop pretending like the incident never happened.

“Okay I’m going to be blunt here,” Tony finally found his voice, “I know what happened on New Years, you know what happened on New Years...”

“I thought we under the unspoken rule that it never happened,” Pepper exclaimed exasperatedly.

“Okay,” Tony replied. He put Pepper’s paper weight back on her desk, “How would you like to go get drinks sometime, like a casual vibe kind of thing, maybe at that Italian restaurant you love,” He tapped at the desk.

“Guiliani’s?” Pepper tried and failed to hide her smile. Why was this idiot so endearing to her?

“Yes, that’s the place. Unless you want to go somewhere else or not do that-”

Pepper took a breath. She couldn’t believe she was about to do this, but she was doing it. It was now or never.

“I’m pregnant.”

Tony looked at her in confusion. He looked at Pepper with his mouth gaping open. “Um, Pardon.”

Pepper sighed and repeated herself, “I’m pregnant, two months along.” 

“That was not what I was expecting,” Tony deadpanned.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tony paced up and down the hospital corridors. The sterile white walls and squeaky floors were doing nothing to distract him from his overbearing thoughts. He briskly walked back to the waiting room, maybe it would smell less like hand sanitizer.

The waiting room was relatively empty. Tony sat down on one of the plushy fold-up chairs, tapping his foot on the carpeted flooring while staring at the mosaic mural on the wall.

Despite all of his efforts, Tony couldn’t seem to stop worst case scenarios from racing through his head. Happy, at his instruction, was buying some coffee, Rhodey was on some mandatory overseas mission, and Pepper was in fucking labor right now.

Tony put his hands on his face and leaned down, in an attempt to quell an upcoming anxiety attack. Today, or hopefully today, he was going to be a father, actually have a kid out there, his responsibility. This wasn’t just some AI where Tony could delete any screwed up code. If he messed up, there were no redos, no turning back. His kid would have to live with the consequences.

Tony couldn’t help but think that he had already failed his unborn kid. The fact that his personal assistant was pregnant with his kid had, despite their best efforts, already been leaked to the press.

Tony knew what that meant, because he had grown up in this reality. His child would be raised with the weight of being a Stark, and the Stark legacy bullshit. Their every move would be scrutinized by the press and judged by the entire nation.

In fact, Tony was surprised that the press wasn’t outside the hospital doors right now, waiting to have an interview with the first ever Stark baby, heir to Stark industries. Okay, he was being a bit dramatic.

Luckily, Tony had chosen this hospital for the sole reason that it was a private establishment and had an excellent NDA policy. He doubted the old couple in the back of the waiting room, or the weary looking nurses wheeling gurneys would take much interest in calling the press.

Happy’s voice lifted Tony out of his thoughts, “Here’s some coffee boss.”

Tony grabbed a cup and took a hesitant sip, before quickly replying , “Thanks.”

The two were silent for a few minutes, until Happy asked in a concerned tone, “How is she doing?”

“I don’t know,” Tony gripped the seat rests, “The doctors had to do an emergency c-section on her a couple hours ago, but they haven’t bothered to update me at all, which is rude.”

Tony grabbed some magazine with a power drill on the cover and started absentmindedly flipping through it.

“That baby didn’t want to come out, like you when getting up early.” Happy’s attempt at humour did little to lighten the mood.

The pair were silent for a few minutes until a new voice was added into the mix, “Well Tony, why aren’t you passing cigars out already?”

Tony sat up in his seat and turned to face one of his father’s oldest friends, “Huh, that’s funny Obie, I thought you were against Pep and I keeping the kid.”

Obadiah, dressed in a blue blazer and yellow power tie, was clutching a blue teddy bear in his right hand and cigar box in his left.

“I’ve changed my mind, since you and Pepper decided to have the kid, I might as well deal with it. Plus, I can be uncle Obie.”

“So you decided to be less of an asshole?” Tony retorted.

“Oh come on, give me a break, I got the kid a toy for goodness sakes. I was never an asshole, just worried about how this kid would affect your work productivity.”

“This kid will always come before work,” Tony’s gaze locked with Obadiah, with a determined look in his eyes he replied, “Because he is my kid.”

“Look Tony, I know you have this weird complex with Howard but yo-”

Obadiah was interrupted when the door to the main hospital hallway opened and a nurse in green scrubs walked out. “Mr.Stark-”

All thoughts drained out of Tony’s mind except one, “How is she doing?”

“Miss Potts is awake and weak, but on the road to recovery, she’ll have to stay a night.”

Tony swallowed.

“The baby was born 30 minutes ago at 7 pounds 3 ounces,” The nurse smiled, “If you would like to see them, you can follow me.”

Tony nodded to the nurse, so she turned around and held the door open for him as he followed her. Tony’s chest constricted in anticipation and his hands were clammy with nervous sweat.

Was Pepper truly okay? Why did she have to stay overnight? Was his baby boy okay? Was he healthy? Tony couldn’t even fathom what he looked like. 

Before opening the hospital room door, Tony wiped the sweat off of his hands. Pepper was laid on a comfy hospital bed, propped up by pillows. Her sweaty hair was matted to her forehead and her hospital gown was flecked with blood, but despite all of this, she was the most beautiful person Tony had ever laid eyes on.

In Pepper’s arms was an ugly, wrinkly thing with a head full of dark brown hair and pink skin. Tony almost gasped when he suddenly realized that that baby, sleeping calmly in Pepper’s arms, was his. He had actually helped create a human being.

Tony silently moved towards Pepper’s side, sitting down on a chair next to her bed. “Hi,” he said, in a daze, not able to take his eyes off his son.

“Shhhh,” Pepper softly whispered, “I finally got him to stop crying.”

“He’s so ugly,” Tony whispered, because he had literally nothing else to say.

“Well so far he has your hair color.” 

“Is that even natural? Should I get a doctor to come over, may-”

“Tony, it’s fine. My mom told me I was born with a full head of hair.”

Tony sat back down in seat, relaxing a little. Self-deprecating and guilty thoughts still raged on in his mind. Anxiety, that he wasn’t fit to be a dad, still racked his brain. But as Tony stared at his baby boy and the loving woman holding her, he couldn’t help but think that everything was going to turn out fine.

“Welcome to the world, Edwin.” 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two years before that dreadful day on the 4th of September, a few weeks after Edwin’s 2nd birthday, were both incredibly stressful and happy for Tony and Pepper.

In the first week of Edwin’s life, the new parents spent their days changing diapers, feeding the newborn, and sleeping 3 hours instead of their regular 5 hours. Tony had gained Pepper and him a leave of absence for at least 3 weeks, much to Obadiah’s disliking, so at least they didn’t have to worry about the company.

Tony and Pepper’s bubble of Edwin, themselves, Happy, Obie, and Rhodey when he finally left that mission, came crashing down after 9/11. The country was at war, and with Stark Industries producing the best quality weapons, Tony’s company was at the forefront.

Tony had to leave his leave of absence, reluctantly losing sleep over creating weapons instead of changing diapers. He knew in his heart that he had to be a fixture in Edwin’s life, but with the middle east in chaos, finding the time to spend time with him became harder and harder with each passing month. ‘I’ll make this up as soon as things cool down in a month,’ Tony thought to himself every time he passed out from exhaustion before he could find the chance to rock Edwin’s cradle for a few minutes.

America’s war with Iraq heaped a million more responsibilities onto Pepper’s plate as well. Now she had to schedule Tony’s meetings with military generals along with other science corporations and the stockholders. As Tony’s plate grew in the R&D department, Pepper became the CEO of Stark Industries in everything but title. She did all the work of a CEO, managing to keep Stark Industries at least ten steps ahead of its competition. Like Tony, as the months dragged on, Pepper found less and less time to be a mother to Edwin.

A couple months turned into a year and pretty soon, Edwin was turning one years old. Much to Obie’s dismay, Tony put his foot down, he and Pepper were going to spend the entire week with their son who had spent more time with his nanny than with his own parents.

That week was a huge wake up call for the couple, well, unofficial couple. Tony couldn’t believe how much Edwin had grown in just one year. He went from an ugly pink baby, to a less ugly baby with a mop of dark brown hair and the most adorable bambi brown eyes. 

Tony and Pepper spent their time playing and taking care of little Edwin on the beach. They marveled at his talkative nature, constantly babbling words like nana, dada, and mama, into incoherent sentences. Even though it was hard to keep an eye on their rambunctious son, the two preferred this life to working for their company.

Pepper was disheartened at how much she had already missed in Edwin’s life. She had missed his first words and his first step. Of course Jarvis had recorded those moments, but it wasn’t the same. Pepper yearned for a life where Tony and her spent more time on Edwin than work.

After that blissful week, the two started downsizing Stark industry’s role in the war on terror. Obie and the stockholders were angry and disapproved of this sudden turn in the company, but in the end, Stark industry was Tony’s not theirs. Pepper and Tony spent half of their time working and half with Edwin, living a happy little existence, until that fateful day.

Edwin’s 2nd birthday was a simple, yet joyful, affair. Tony, Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, and even Obie, were there to wish the boy a happy birthday and spoil him with presents. Edwin had grown a lot since last year. He was now running around, making it very hard for the couple to baby proof the house. Tony had programmed Jarvis to follow his every move and had developed about 100 emergency protocols, so it was safe to say that Edwin was probably the most protected 2 year old in the world.

Those emergency protocols didn’t protect Edwin from his kidnappers on the 4th of September. For the next 12 years it would be a mystery as to how exactly Edwin, living with a highly advanced security system, was kidnapped in a home invasion, a home invasion that happened right under Tony Stark and Pepper Pott’s nose. The famous Stark kidnapping would be in the headlines for the next year, and in tv shows like unsolved mysteries and crime until it was solved.

To say that the kidnapping of their son devastated Tony and Pepper would be an understatement. For the first few months, they were both living in denial. The two knew the likelihood of their son being alive after the first 24 hours, but continued to search for him regardless. As the cases grew cold and the months dragged on, the once happy couple grew apart, unable to look at each other now that the reason why they were together in the first place was gone. 

As it became more likely that Edwin would never be found, Pepper threw herself into her work to distract from that fact. Stark industries was once again beating its competitors, but at what cost? Tony adopted his playboy tendencies that he had stopped after Edwin was born once again, drinking and partying as if it was his last day on earth. It didn’t matter what he did, Tony knew he would always fail, because he had failed the one person who mattered most.

Every year, on Edwin’s birthday, Tony and Pepper would be hit hard with the fact that their son was never coming home. Every time a new lead came up, they would grasp onto their dwindling hope until it was inevitably shattered by the case growing cold once again. 

Life went on. Tony was kidnapped, Obadiah betrayed them and Iron Man was born. The years flew past Pepper and Tony after Tony announced his super hero status to the world. Suddenly Tony had to deal with Aliens falling out of the sky and killer robots while Pepper became the head of Stark Industry.

The two had an on and off relationship during those crazy times. After Ultron, they never found the time to be with each other in between their busy schedules. Pepper was heading a new clean energy initiative. Tony was not going on every Avenger mission, but he was supplying them with tech while also heading the R&D department for Stark Industry at the Avenger’s tower and Compound.

Because of this, when the news that Tony and Pepper had been desperately hoping for, for the past 12 years reached them, they were 3000 miles away and on a break.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**November 24th, 2015**

Tony was flying over the Atlantic with the team. It was one of those days, which were becoming fewer and farther between, when he took out the armor and partook in a standard Avengers mission. 

The mission was completed easily, some Hydra base in Croatia that had turned into a human experimentation ring. Probably because all of the available avengers had shown up, including Clint, who was supposed to be retired, but joined a mission every six months or so. Wanda and Sam, who weren’t technically avengers, had been given the okay for this mission. Even Rhodey joined, it was a few days before Thanksgiving so he was free from his military duties anyway. 

The mood in the quinjet could only be described as contented. It was a rare moment when no super villain was out for revenge, Pepper and him were on a break, but it was an amicable break, and the villains the avengers had to deal with were ridiculously easy for them to overcome. 

Wanda was lifting small blocks with her powers while Nat sat with a tablet in hand, watching and taking notes. Clint was convincing Sam to come to his house for Thanksgiving, the rest of the team, including Tony, had already agreed because they had nowhere else to be. Steve was showing Vision some of his drawings while the later looked at them with interest. Tony watched the group for a split second, before standing up. He decided to keep Rhodey company in the cockpit. 

If Bruce and Thor were there, Tony would have said this moment was eerily similar to the days right before Ultron happened. He should have known it was the calm before the storm.

“Boss,” Friday said louder than usual and with such urgency that everyone stopped what they were doing. “The Baby Milk Protocol has been activated.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prologue is meh. Please give constructive criticism.


	2. Got a Call From an Old Friend we Used to be Real Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is set in motion

**November 14th, 2015**

Justin Hammer was staring at the spider displayed on the screen. To his right was Norman Osbourne, his ticket to having Hammer Industries be a successful weapons manufacturer once again. This time though, the weapons would be biological.

It had been an embarrassing 5 years in prison. Of course it would have been a life sentence if not for Justin’s ‘good behavior,’ AKA bribery. Even though his company had run stagnant, thanks to the man child Tony Stark, Justin still had plenty of money left in his accounts. 

He was sure that this new venture with Oscorp would be the start of a brand new era for Hammer Industry. According to the scientists in this very lab, the oz serum, which was really a new and improved super soldier serum, had already been successful with animal testing. If Justin knew anything about army generals, it was that they grew giddy with the prospect of a new Captain America.

Justin Hammer’s thoughts were interrupted by Osborn’s question, “You a fan of Greek mythology Mr.Hammer?”

“Oh, um, not really.”

“Ever hear the myth of Arachne?”

Justin assumed that the myth had something to do with spiders, but hadn’t heard of it before, so he replied, “Can’t say I have, Osborn.”

Osborn turned to look at the spider that was placed on his gloved hand. Arachnophobia had been a fear of Justin’s since he was a kid, but he didn’t want Osborn to know that. He stayed as far away from the black spider as he could without looking like a wussy.

Osborn continued telling the story of Arachne, “The story goes that Athena--You know Athena right?” Justin nodded his head.

“Seems she heard there was this woman on earth--A mere mortal like you and me--Who happened to be a better spin stress than she was.”

“Spin stress?” Justin Hammer asked. 

Osborn ignored his question, entirely enthralled in his creation, “Athena wasn’t too happy to hear this and she came down to earth and destroyed the woman’s creations.”

“Sounds like a woman,” Justin chuckled nervously. The way Osborn told his story, along with the huge spider a foot away from him, gave this whole conversation a creepy atmosphere. ‘Why do I always have to deal with crazy people in order to get what I want?’ Justin thought to himself.

“When this mortal girl saw what had happened--That she had insulted the Gods and that her life’s work had been destroyed--She hanged herself. Athena took pity on this poor girl, and touched her on the forehead with a magic liquid and said...”

Osborn stroked the creepy black spider’s head, lifeless blue eyes, huge black fangs and all, while saying, “You shall not die, Arachne. Instead you shall be transformed and weave your web forever. At Athena’s words, Arachne shrank and blackened. First her nose and ears fell off and then her fingers turned into legs.”

Norman Osborn, with a determined look on his face, gazed at the spider’s body, which had two orange O’s in the middle. “What was left of her became her body, out of which she spins and was left to spin her web.”

Osborn’s creepy speech, much to Justin’s relief, was interrupted by his lab assistant, “Mr.Osborn?” He turned to face the speaker, “Your lawyer is on the cell phone. Says it’s important.”

“Important to whom?” Osborn answered with an annoyed voice. Justin assumed, like the last crazy guy he had to work with, the man didn’t like to be interrupted. He hoped this venture didn’t turn out like the last.

Before the assistant could answer, Osborn grabbed the phone. “I told you I don’t want to be bothered in my lab.” Much to Justin Hammer’s horror, he shoved the spider onto his hand.

Norman Osborn’s words and the sound of people working in the lab ceased as all Justin could do was stare at the huge black spider on his hand in silent terror. After a few seconds, he eyed an empty green canister on a work table a few feet away. Justin Hammer practically flung the spider into the canister and ran after Osborn, who was walking to his office, immersed in a phone call. He didn’t want to go back to this lab ever again.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few minutes later, unbeknownst to Norman Osborn or any of his partners, the black spider climbed out of its green canister prison, and started crawling through the Oscorp Industry building.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**November 14th, 2015**

Peter sat at the lunch table against the back wall, far away from Flash and his gang, but somewhat close to Liz’s table. He immersed himself in a science book about how the human genome reacted to certain chemical compounds. Peter wanted to be ready to ask questions at the Oscorp field trip tomorrow.

One might think that Peter wouldn’t want to do that, in fear of being made fun of for being a nerd, but in all honesty, he didn’t have anything to lose. Peter thought that Midtown High, a school for nerds, would finally be the place he fit in. Unfortunately he was dead wrong.

Instead of a jock hierarchy like at his Queen’s middle school, your popularity at Midtown High was determined by how much money your parents made. That made Flash Thompson, whose dad owned almost half of New York, the top jock, instead he wasn’t a jock, just a nerd who thought he was cool by calling other nerds names like Penis Parker.

Where that name came from and why Flash had such a vendetta against him, Peter would never know. Well, actually he could guess why Flash disliked him so much. Peter earned a spot on decathlon while Flash was forced to be his alternate. Being bested by some scholarship kid from Queen’s, whose Aunt and Uncle could barely pay their bills, must have done nothing for Flash’s ego.

At least in Middle School, while still bullied, Peter always had Harry by his side. Now he had no one. He spent his lunches reading science books or scrolling through his phone hoping that Flash wouldn’t notice him, with no one for company but the weird book girl. Well, that was unfair. Peter was probably labeled as way worse by his peers.

If only Harry hadn’t flunked the Midtown entrance exam. His dad could have bribed the school too, Peter bet that Flash’s dad had. Of course he hadn’t and now his best friend was being homeschooled by his dad, who sort of creeped Peter out.

Peter sighed dejectedly and put his book face down on his table. He peered at the other students, laughing and talking with their friends, through the top of his book as he leaned his face down towards the table.

“Hey what’er’ya doing?” A voice asked.

Peter turned around to find the guy on his robotics team, Ned if he remembered correctly. “Oh, uh, I actually don’t know.”

“Oh yeah I do that thing too, where you try to find a different perspective from your eyes by obscuring it with something.” Ned sat down across from Peter and held out his hand, “Ned, by the way.”

“Peter,” Peter said in return as he shook Ned’s hand, slightly confused as to what the guy was doing.

Peter put his hand down, “So, uh Ned, what brings you to my table?”

“Your table?” The weird book girl didn’t look up from her book. Peter and Ned glanced at her for a second then returned to their conversation.

“Just here to y’know, talk about robotics.”

“But aren’t we in different sub teams?” Peter cursed inwardly to himself. Why on earth was he shutting the conversation down? This was the first time he had talked to somebody his age who wasn’t Harry and didn’t call him Penis Parker since before the Summer.

“Yeah,” Ned seemed a little taken aback, “But we can still share notes on how to run an autonomous like team A.”

“Wish I had an autonomous like theirs, my team won’t let me touch anything cause they don’t trust me since I’m a freshman.”

“Dude, Same!” Ned’s eyes lit up and he started talking in an animated manner, like one does when they find someone else who has the exact same, specific, problems that they do.

“My team is all like, ‘Well Ned, even though you have proved that you're actually good at hacking, we won’t let you work on the code, you’re on notebook duty.’”

“I’m on notebook duty too! Writing the notebook sucks.”

“I know right?! The whole reason why I joined robotics in the first place was to get better at programming languages closer to C.”

Peter’s book lay forgotten next to him as he talked with a new found friend.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We should totally start our own robotics sub team, there are a ton of extra parts for a drive base in the storage room. You could code and I could build, we would be an unstoppable team.”

“You probably wouldn’t be able to use the star screws though, I heard from the mentor that we’re running short on them.”

“Somewhat of a setback, but we can deal with that.” Peter smiled as he thought of starting a robotics sub team with Ned. Only 30 minutes ago he hadn’t had one friend, even acquaintance to speak of in this school.

Peter and Ned had gym now, along with almost everyone from their lunch period, including Flash and his gang of rich kids who thought they were cool. Coach Wilson grouped everyone into pairs in order to complete the Captain America fitness challenge.

Nobody was actually committed to completing the challenge. A group of girls, which Liz was a part of, were talking about something while sitting on the bleachers to the side of the gym. Peter would usually be eavesdropping on them, because if it wasn’t obvious before, he had a huge crush on the junior who had been the only one to be nice to him at decathlon.

Now though, Peter had an actual friend to talk to. Ned and him, along with almost everybody in the gym were talking instead of doing their sit ups. Flash’s gang was messing around with the blue mats, running then falling on them to create sort of a slide on the gym floor.

Peter didn’t think he would ever get used to how nice everything was at Midtown. At his Middle and Elementary School, the bleachers would be dirty and filled with gum on the bottom. The gym floors would never be this shiny. Instead of a room well lighted by the sun coming from the huge windows, his old school’s gym would be lighted by cheap fluorescent lighting that only worked half the time.

Peter’s thoughts were interrupted by Coach Wilson’s lazy, yet surprisingly loud, voice, “Okay kids, P.E. is over. Take your mats to the bin.”

Hands being taken off of squishy and sticky blue mats were heard as the students started lazily doing what the Coach had asked. It was sort of a lazy day. Besides from the multiple field trips happening tomorrow, there wasn’t much going on in the school until after Thanksgiving break.

Unfortunately for Peter, he was between the mat bin and Flash. Before the bully put his mat in the bin, he yelled, “Sup Penis Parker,” and smacked Peter with his mat.

The smack was surprisingly strong for Flash, and Peter was skinny for his age, so he fell with an oof onto the wood floor. Ned helped him up, “Don’t worry about Flash Peter, he’ll lose interest in you eventually.”

“How do you know?” Peter asked, picking up his glasses that had fallen off of his face when he fell.

“Used to bully me back in Middle School,” The two boys made their way out of the gym and into the hallways, “Now doesn’t even acknowledge I exist, which is definitely a step up.”

“Definitely,” Peter agreed, “It must have sucked though to have to deal with him all through Middle School.”

“Yeah.” They walked a little ways before Peter suddenly stopped, “So what’s your last block?”

“English.”

“I have Chemistry right now, but...”

“Do you want to exchange snaps?” Ned asked, knowing full well that Peter wanted to ask him that, but based on his one day of talking with him, Ned knew he was too shy to ask upfront.

“That’d be awesome dude, Thanks.”

They both friend requested each other on SnapChat and headed to their different classes.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter held onto the handrail as the L-train made its way through Queens. He was in high spirits. His average, shitty day, was turning out to be one of the best he had had in a long time. For the first time since 1st grade, Peter had actually made a friend, and with no help from Harry.

Natural light illuminated the train as it entered the Queen’s Borough Bridge. The subway screeched as it sped through a particularly rusty part of the track.. Peter grabbed his phone, finding an unexpected message from Harry.

**Harry:So my Dad is crazy busy with this new project and we haven’t hung out in a while so can I swing by your place?**

Peter smiled to himself as he read the text, this day was turning out to be better and better. Harry was almost never able to hang out like they used to before his dad decided to homeschool him. Peter always felt bad for Harry, because his dad always seemed on edge, but he felt even worse when he was taken out of school. 

According to Harry, his classes online were rigorous and his dad had hired a personal assistant to monitor his computer 24/7, making sure he was only playing 15 minutes of video games a day and never strayed from his school work.

Peter shuddered to himself as he moved his fingers to answer the text, glad that Uncle Ben and Aunt May weren’t that insane.

**Peter:Thatd be great**

**Peter:On the Ltrain now**

A few moments later, Peter felt his phone slightly vibrate in his pocket. Harry had responded.

**Harry:Calling my driver now**

As the train slowed to a stop, Peter practically flung himself out of there. He climbed the dirty subway steps leading to the outside by twos. Along the way to his apartment, he didn’t scan the dumpsters next to the rich neighborhood for something valuable. Aunt May somewhat disapproved of his dumpster diving since she thought the stuff in there was too dirty, but Peter staunchly defended his passion since he had found great tech numerous times.

As he walked up the stairs of his apartment, running his hands along the dirty stucco railing, Peter couldn’t help but marvel at how rich Harry’s family was. It seemed just like yesterday that his dad was a bankrupt scientist and his parents were struggling to make ends meet in an apartment almost identical to his own.

Now Harry, along with his mom and dad, lived in Manhattan. Seemingly overnight, his dad’s business, Oscorp, had risen in the ranks enough to be one of the leading biology science companies in the world. Harry’s room was bigger than Peter’s entire apartment and he had his own driver. Peter wasn’t jealous of his friend’s family’s new found wealth. He was happy for them, but also a little sad that his childhood friend lived farther away.

After unlocking the door and prying it open, Peter called into the apartment, “May?” Sometimes his Aunt managed to make it back from her part time job at the senior center before Peter came home. He hoped today was one of those days because he really needed to ask Aunt May if Harry could come, before Harry actually arrived.

The answer to Peter’s question came from a shushing sound in the kitchen. Aunt May was talking on the phone while she glared at Peter. The kitchen/dining room table, since they didn’t have a dining room, was filled up with sport sections of the newspapers, coupons, and old homework worksheets, so Peter walked the short distance to his room and discarded his backpack.

He came back to the kitchen, where Aunt May was still talking on the phone. She was talking to her old college friend, Julie, so Peter assumed this was going to be a while. 

Peter started cleaning their cheap, plastic counter tops by shoving random kitchen supplies he didn’t know what to do with in random drawers. In the Parker household, there was no organization. May was heavily influenced as a child by her Hippie mom, so she didn’t believe in it. 

Ben didn’t care all too much about an organized kitchen. As the main cook of the house, since Peter and May couldn’t cook even if held at gunpoint, he only cared that all the ingredients were readily available. 

Peter, whose job it was to clean the countertops and do the dishes, liked no organization because shoving things in random drawers was decidedly easier than putting them in the right place. With their small family, coupled with a small kitchen and not much stuff, their disorganized chaos somewhat worked. 

After completing his chores, Aunt May finally got off the phone. Peter immediately barraged her with questions. “Can Harry come over? We haven’t hung out in so long and we’ll just be in the science lab the entire time. Please?”

Luckily for Peter, Aunt May had a go with the flow attitude when it came to kids in her house, “Well if he doesn’t mind the mess, cleaning out the drunk drawer by the way take your stuff, then he’s more than welcome to come.”

“Thanks!” Peter yelled from the hallway, ready to text Harry in order to see where he was at. 

“Don’t forget, Ben’s birthday is on Thanksgiving, do you have your part of the present ready?” May called, “Don’t worry, I already finished the wiring, it should be done in a day!”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I still can’t believe you got the landlord to allow you to use this place as your science lab, and for free,” Harry started walking down the stairs that led to the basement of Peter’s apartment complex. 

“Well, y’know he was friends with my parents before they passed,” Peter jumped down the last step leading into the basement. It was a small room fitted with a washing machine, where the apartment dwellers did their laundry.

“Since our apartment is so small he kept all of their research, science, and random stuff in this spare room. It didn’t take much to convince him for me to use it. I just have to clean his office every other week.”

“That’s a sweet deal,” Harry remarked as he opened the rusty door handle, remembering to turn it 360 degrees as he had done a million times before.

“So what tech have you added to this place, any improvements to the gaming PC?” They entered the apartment complex’s storage room, which was Peter’s unofficial lab.

The room was fairly large, but looked smaller than it was because of all of the boxes, filled to the brim with memorabilia, placed along almost every wall space. In the corner of the room, there were multiple books, all in correlation to chemistry or engineering, piled in a stack nearly as tall as Peter.

In the only wall space not taken up by boxes, lay a gaming PC that Peter had built from tech he had found in the dumpster and had repaired, along with some more specific components he had received for Christmas and his Birthday.

Propped up on boxes, was a white board, filled to the brim with complex equations and diagrams of different elements. In the middle of the room, were multiple tables filled with chemistry vials, a soldering iron, and multiple research papers and files that Peter had inherited from his dad.

Harry made a beeline for the PC once they entered the room. “No way! You have a new keyboard. Never thought you would ever replace the old one.”

“Yeah,” Peter smiled, “Uncle Ben got me that for my birthday, no more broken keys. I also got the new fallout game.” 

“I can’t believe we haven’t seen each other since before your Birthday.”

“I know. It’s been way too long, I have like, no friends at midtown. Well actually,” Peter suddenly remembered Ned, “I have one acquaintance, but school still sucks without you.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry sighed, looking utterly defeated, “You're the only person my dad lets me stay in contact with anymore. Probably because you're like super smart and won’t ‘distract’ me,” He put up air quotations with his hands while saying the word _distract_. “He went completely insane once I failed that stupid test,” Harry angrily kicked a box full of books.

Peter tried to remember what Norman Osborn was like before his influence and wealth skyrocketed about a year ago. The man hadn’t wanted Harry inviting over friends that often, so the two boys had usually played at Peter’s house or in the neighborhood. On the rare times that Peter stayed over at Harry’s house, his dad was always at some lab. 

“Well at least you get to see your dad and other world renowned scientists make great scientific achievements,” Peter added, in hopes of cheering his friend up. “I read that doctor Octavius is on the verge of a medical breakthrough in creating robotic, mind controlled limbs for people who’ve lost their arms.”

Harry’s anger was replaced with a look of respect, “Yeah, Doc Ock is a pretty great guy. He lets me look at his code and wiring sometimes,” Peter looked at him with wide, amazed eyes. 

“Not that I understand anything, but it’s still pretty cool.” Harry smirked at Peter’s gobsmacked expression.

“Y-You actually get to see what his wiring and code looks like? Oh My God that’s so awesome man! Do you also get to see your dad studying human tissue, dead of course. With how it reacts to chemicals? That would be so cool! I read that Oscorp is developing antidotes to poisonous gas made in the 1940’s by Hydra. Imagine how many lives they could save. And it would completely change medical science as we know it.”

Harry interrupted Peter’s scientific word vomit with a frown, “My dad isn’t that cool,” his face took the look of utter disdain, “What he’s doing is nowhere near what Stark Industry is doing with the arc reactor technology and stuff,” Harry had never been one for science, but from listening to Justin Hammer’s rants about how much he hated Tony Stark, he knew everything going on in that company.

Peter was about to respond with an inquisitive, ‘but isn’t your dad and Tony Stark rivals,’ but he thought better of it. Obviously Harry needed to vent, like Aunt May did when her coworker Amy was, as his aunt put it, ‘being a bitch’. From watching Uncle Ben listen to Aunt May ranting, Peter knew that the best way to make his friend feel better, was to agree with everything he said.

“Yeah, Stark Industry is like so much better than Oscorp. The Scientific American named at number one, while Oscorp is at like 10. Plus they're run by a genuine super hero. How awesome is that?”

Harry snorted, “Serves them right.”

“So anyway, heard of the game Agar.io? Everybody in Midtown is playing it.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that game, haven’t been able to play it though since my dad locks me out of certain websites and I don’t know the password to the parental settings on my computer.”

“We should totally play it right now!” Peter grabbed a computer from his backpack, which he had taken down with him to his lab. “You can use the laptop Midtown supplied me with, just make sure to use incognito mode, I overrode the parental code controlling what websites I can see, but the administrators can still see my history.”

“Cool,” Harry said as he opened the laptop and took a seat at the soldering table, which was the only one with a plug. 

“The password is midtownpassword123 all lowercase no spaces,” Peter added while he booted up his mac.

Harry snickered at the ridiculously easy to guess password, “Wish my dad was that bad at cyber security, Jesus, no wonder you can override their controls.”

“Yeah, their passwords, if you can believe it, are even worse than the ones at Queens Middle School.”

The two friends played the game Agar.io on the same server as they laughed and recounted fond memories from their childhood. At one point, Harry and Peter teamed up, making it to the top of the leaderboard, until some user with a doge skin ate them. Their screams of “Nooo!, stupid piece of shit,” could be heard throughout the apartment complex.

Peter interjected every 10 minutes or so with some science rant about the arc reactor technology. Harry couldn’t make heads or tails of what his friend was talking about, but he enjoyed seeing him so excited about something nonetheless.

To most people, Peter seemed like a shy, nerdy kid, who spent all of his time doing introverted things. Harry wouldn’t know what those things were, but he knew he was extroverted, which made not being able to interact with other kids his age especially unwelcome.

To people like Harry, who were actually friends with Peter, he knew that once Peter was talking about something that interested him, whether that be science, Star Wars, or some other nerdy show, he wouldn’t shut up. He could go on for hours talking about this or that. 

Before his dad had gone batshit insane, Harry had found his friend’s over talkative nature somewhat annoying. Now though, he was happy his friend felt comfortable enough to talk to him about whatever popped into his mind. Harry missed the days when it was just him and Peter, goofing off, playing way too many video games, and having fun. He resolved to pass the Midtown entrance exam next year with flying colors.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the late afternoon turned to dusk, Harry and Peter grew tired of playing Agar.io. Peter decided to show him the project he was working on for Ben’s birthday, but before he could do that, Harry looked at him with such a serious face, so unlike the one that Peter had seen since childhood, that he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Okay Peter,” Harry sighed heavily, “What I’m about to tell you is big, and I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I just have to tell someone, someone has to know-”

“What? -” Peter was about to interject before Harry continued.

“I know I can trust you, you’re my best friend, but you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone.” Harry said this with such resoluteness that Peter nodded his head earnestly. His friend’s demeanor was seldom serious, so Peter was curious as to what he wanted to tell him.

“I swear I won’t tell anyone. I don’t really have anyone to tell it to and even if I did, I wouldn’t betray you like that.”

“Okay, Okay,” Harry rubbed his hands together and breathed deeply, as if hyping himself up, “I don’t know when my driver is coming, but hopefully not soon because this isn’t a five minute thing.”

Peter stared at his friend in anticipation, wishing Harry would just spill whatever he was going to tell him already.

“So remember when I told you that my da-” Before Harry could finish his sentence, the doorknob on the door leading to the main part of the apartment’s basement started turning.

Harry stopped what he was saying and stared at the door in terror. Peter looked at his friend inquisitively, confused as to why he was so worried about someone on the other side of the door. It was probably either Aunt May or Uncle Ben calling him and Harry for dinner.

The gears started turning in Peter’s head as he wondered if what Harry was trying to tell him had anything to do with why he looked so terrified of someone trying to open the door of Peter’s lab. Was the person on the other side of the door a hitman? Was Harry involved in a cult?

Before Peter’s overactive imagination could take over his mind, the door finally opened to reveal the weird book girl. Harry sighed in relief as Peter looked at the girl with confusion. Why was she here?

The weird book girl looked somewhat alarmed as it probably appeared to her that she had unwittingly stepped into a private conversation. She was holding onto a laundry basket piled with towels.

After a few minutes of the three of them just staring at each other, Michelle finally spoke up. “Sorry for uh-”

All of a sudden, Harry’s phone pinged. From its place on the chemistry vial table, the boy could see a text message from his driver. “Oh shit!”

He jumped out of his seat and grabbed his phone before rushing to the door. Before leaving, Harry yelled, “Sorry Peter, I have to go,” he made a face, “my dad wants me home.”

Peter called after him before he ran out of earshot, “Wait! Harry!”

Harry poked his head through the door, “Yeah?”

“My class is going to Oscorp tomorrow. Will you be there?”

“I’ll ask my dad about it, but I doubt he’ll say yes. Bye Peter, hope we get to hang out again soon,” Harry’s voice faded away as his feet could be heard pounding up the basement steps.

Now, Peter was left alone with the weird book girl(he should really stop calling her that), who had observed the scene. She had left the doorway, moving on to stand in front of the white board, surveying Peter’s equations.

“Wow,” she commented, “I do not understand anything on this board at all.” She turned to Peter, “Did you write these?”

Peter, who was pondering why Harry abruptly left and what he wanted to tell him, snapped out of his stupor. “Oh, uh, oh yeah, those are my Father’s actually.”

Always ready to talk about science, Peter grabbed a file, careful not to spill any of the Chemistry vials filled with solutions that surrounded it. 

Before he could explain further though, the girl commented on his statement. “So is your Dad a scientist?”

“He was, this is the experiment he was working on before he died.”

The weird book girl didn’t quite know how to respond to that, “Oh, um, sorry about that.”

They stood there in awkward silence until Peter interjected, “Sorry, didn’t mean to put a damper on things. I’m Peter by the way.”

“Michelle.”

“So, uh, don’t take this the wrong way, but, um, so what brings you to my lab, Michelle?”

Michelle put the laundry basket she was holding on top of a box labelled picture albums, “You mean a glorified storage area,” the mirth in Michelle’s eyes revealed that she was messing with him, “I actually live here.”

Peter widened his eyes in surprise. He would have never suspected that the girl he had sat near during lunch time for the past 2 months actually lived in the same apartment complex as him. 

“Just moved here during the summer,” Michelle continued, “Usually I don’t do the laundry, but our stove is broken and I don’t know how to barbeque, so here I am.” 

Michelle realized that she hadn’t answered Peter’s question, so she added, “Thought you and that friend of yours were breaking into this place or something, not that there’s anything to steal.”

Peter nodded, “That barbeque on the patio doesn’t work,” Before he could stop himself, he asked, “My Uncle is making burgers today, I’m sure your family could have dinner with us?” 

Michelle smirked as Peter went on to say, “Not that you have to do that.”

“I’ll ask my mom about it, it’s just me and her right now, so you guys will only have to set two extra places. Guess, I’ll be doing laundry right now.” She awkwardly backed out of the room and walked towards the laundry machine.

Peter followed suit. He closed the door to his lab and ran up the stairs. On his way to his apartment Peter hoped that his Aunt and Uncle wouldn’t be mad that he had invited two people over to dinner without asking them. He was sure they’d be fine with it. 

Uncle Ben always loved meeting new people, loved talking their ear off about how much he hated it when studios remade old 80’s movies. Once Aunt May heard that Michelle was from his school, she would be 100 percent on board with the idea. She had been pestering him to make new friends for a while now.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey Uncle Ben,” Peter said casually as he opened the door and walked to the kitchen table.

Uncle Ben was talking to Aunt May, “You know May, some guys from the company are-” He noticed Peter, “Oh hey, I wasn’t expecting you to be up from that lab of yours for another,” Ben checked his watch, “9 hours.”

“Most of the time I have to practically drag you out of there,” May added, but with no ill feelings.

“Yeah, Yeah,” Peter said.

“So where’s Harry?” May asked as she arranged frozen fries onto a cookie sheet. “Harry was here? How’s he doing these days? Used to see him all the time around here.”

“Harry had to leave,” Peter turned to Ben, “Harry’s doing fine I guess. Told me his dad was being an ass though.”

“Peter language!”

“Oh it’s fine May, I’m sure Peter’s heard worse from kids at school.” Peter nodded, that was the understatement of the year, “So why are you up here this early?”

“Oh um,” Peter seemed to remember the whole reason why he came up here in the first place. He had been distracted by the thought of Harry. Peter was still extremely curious as to what his friend wanted to tell him.

“Can Michelle and her mom have dinner with us tonight? I can help make dinner for two extra people. Their stove is broken and they wanted to use the broken barbeque on the patio. Michelle and her mom live in this apartment complex, so we should get to know them, and Michelle goes to my school-”

Aunt May cut off Peter’s word vomit, “Of course, sweetie. It’ll be no trouble setting two extra plates since I was making extra food for Harry anyways. Who’s this Michelle though?” May leaned into the countertop, as if preparing herself to listen to some juicy drama.

“Oh she’s no one.” Peter hastily added, already knowing what thoughts were circulating inside his Aunt and Uncle’s heads. They both looked at him inquisitively.

“I mean she’s not no one, I sit with her at lunch, but we’ve never spoken to each other until today though. It’s hard to explain, she’s just a friend.”

“Just a friend, Eh,” Uncle Ben wore a shit eating grin while Aunt May looked as though she didn’t believe him.

“Ughh, it’s not like that!” Peter exclaimed, “I’ll just tell her she can join us for dinner now.” He ran out the door to avoid further embarrassment. Uncle Ben called, “Dinner will be ready in 2 hours,” right before Peter was out of ear shot.

When he reached the basement, Michelle was leaning against the wall, reading Atlas shrugged while her laundry cycled through the wash. “Oh hey your back,” she said, not looking up from her book.

“So dinner will be ready in 2 hours, my Aunt set two extra places for you guys, also a warning in advance, they are really embarrassing.”

“Okay, sounds cool, thanks,” Michelle seemed engrossed in her book, so Peter didn’t comment further, instead heading to his lab for some science time. When he took out the project he was working on, he noticed the empty chair next to the computer and blurted out, “Hey Michelle, do you want to sit over here, it’s probably more comfortable than the wall.”

Michelle walked over to the lab and sat in the computer chair without a word. Peter brought out the project he was working on, a birthday present for Uncle Ben. It was a neon light that spelled out Hasta La Vista, Baby. Uncle Ben loved terminator 1 and 2(he pretended like the other ones didn’t exist), and Peter’s family needed something to fill up the bare walls of their apartment, so it was the perfect gift.

As Peter connected some of the last LED lights to the breadboard that was attached to an arduino circuit board, he wondered why he had felt the sudden urge to go out of his way to be nice for Michelle. It wasn’t like Peter was a mean person, but he usually wasn’t the type to suddenly invite somebody he barely knew over to dinner just because.

Well, Peter didn’t barely know Michelle before today. Yes, he hadn’t known her name, but he sat with her at lunch and they did have decathlon practices together every Thursday(there was no practice today because it was so close to Thanksgiving). Despite all of this, Peter had barely paid attention to her. He had just assumed she was the weird book girl who never really wanted anything to do with anybody besides the characters in books. That’s how she had portrayed herself until today anyhow.

Peter looked up from the LEDs to the computer chair. Instead of finding Michelle sitting there, it was empty. She was at the tech side of Peter’s lab, holding a voltmeter that he had made from old printer parts. 

When Michelle caught his gaze, she put down the voltmeter and asked, “So, where did you get all this stuff?”

“Oh um,” Peter walked over to the other side of the table she was standing next to, “A lot of the stuff over there is my father’s, but this stuff is just random tech I found in the dumpster.”

“Impressive.” 

Peter’s face reddened and he scratched the back of his head, “I usually found these things basically completely intact, some of them didn’t even need repairs, so many people throw like completely fine things in the trash.”

“That’s what happens when a society awards the wealthy, so they keep on getting richer and creating waste, leaving the poor to clean up after them.” Peter stared at her with visible confusion so she added, “Sorry, I can’t seem to have a normal conversation without talking about politics.”

Peter laughed, thinking how Harry had jokingly accused him of not being able to have a normal conversation, “I’m the same way except with science, can’t understand anything having to do with politicians though. All I know, from my Uncle Ben, is that they’re all crooked.”

Michelle sighed, “Yeah that about sums it up,” she smiled, “I don’t know anything about science, only got to midtown because they wanted some good art students, so I guess we’re even.”

“I guess so.” Awkward silence hung in the air, and Michelle didn’t seem interested in reading her book, so Peter blurted out, “Do you want to see what the chemical compound on the board created? You may be able to find a use for it since you’re into art and all that.”

Michelle answered with a , “Sure,” so Peter led her to the chemistry table right next to the whiteboard. It was filled with files, vials, and mixers, all looking to be in disarray. To most people, Peter’s lab seemed like an unorganized mess, but to him, it was chaotic but he also somehow knew where everything was.

He stopped next to a bigger than average vial, inside it was a glass stirrer that was attached to the contents of the vial. The content was a sticky substance that somewhat resembled cobwebs. It was impossible to unstick the glass stirrer from the weblike material though, so Michelle assumed that unlike cobwebs, Peter’s dad’s creation was a lot stronger.

“So,” Peter asked when he had shown Michelle the vial, “Could this be used for an art project or something?”

Michelle didn’t want to be completely rude, despite the reputation she had earned at midtown, she was far from anti-social, so Michelle answered, “Um, I mean, I guess. Maybe an art project about spiders?” She shrugged hopelessly.

Despite Michelle’s unenthusiastic response to his Father’s creation, Peter felt the need to add more, “Well this actually isn’t the compound's beginning form,” He looked at a notebook stained with chemicals and put on some safety goggles.

Michelle took a step back, “should I be wearing those too?”

“Oh, no you don’t need to, I actually just put these on out of habit,” Peter started mixing different elements he had on hand into the vial. 

It took him a few minutes of adding and mixing before he turned to Michelle, who had been observing him work, “Voila! This is the unfinished product.” Michelle snorted at his theatrics. She looked in the vial only to find white liquid. 

“And this is where the magic begins!” Peter announced with the excitement of a scientist whose experiment finally works out. He began stirring the liquid. Michelle went from unimpressed to impressed as the liquid slowly became the weblike solid she had seen in the other vial.

“That’s actually sort of cool,” Michelle announced when Peter looked up at her expectantly, “But, like are those vials ruined now cause of all of the sticky stuff on them.”

“Oh no, actually this compound dissolves in 2 hours, I can make it 5 or even 1 if I play around with it, but then I’ve found that it isn’t as sticky and strong. According to my dad’s research this stuff is pretty strong. Haven’t been able to test it out though.”

Michelle looked even more impressed. What had begun as an uninteresting science thing had become a pretty cool thing, Michelle had no other way to express what Peter’s weird substance was, because she did not know science.

“Wow, I can’t believe I’m the same age of somebody who invented a cool science invention.”

“Well it was mostly my father’s invention, I just made some adjustments. And it’s not that impressive since there isn’t really any practical application for it.”

“You sorta sound like Luke Skywalker with the whole father thing,” Michelle blurted out then immediately regretted. Why did she have to blurt out every thought that came to her mind? This is why she preferred not to talk to people.

Before Michelle could apologize for her statement, Peter started talking a mile a minute, “Oh My God! You watch Star Wars too! Do you also like the prequels? Cause I’m the only one in my family who likes them. What do you think is going to happen in the Force Awakens? I’ve seen the trailer for it and I think that the lady with the droid is probably Luke’s daughter.”

Peter suddenly seemed to realize he had word vomited once again, so he stuttered, “S-sorry, I’ve just never met a girl who’s been into Star War before.” 

Michelle gave him a look, as if to imply that was sort of sexist, so Peter added, “Not that girls can’t be into Star Wars, I’ve just never met any who have been, but I’ve never been friends with a girl before, okay shutting up now.”

Michelle couldn’t help but smile, this nerd was so endearing. She had a reputation to uphold though, so she immediately hid it. “I’m not really that into Star Wars,” Peter’s face somewhat fell, “But I do like the original trilogy, probably can’t remember the name of every alien species and planet though.” 

“Have you ever seen the prequels?”

“Nope, my Dad said they sucked so I never watched them,” she scoffed, “That’s even more reason to watch them though.”

Peter sensed something going on there, but Aunt May always told him not to pry, so instead he said, “Uncle Ben thinks that way too, but I like them, so you should give them a try.”

“I will. By the way, sorry if that comment was insensitive,” Michelle admitted, “I don’t really know how to talk to people.”

“I don’t really know how to talk to people either,” Peter scratched the back of his head, “But it’s fine, my parents died when I was three, so I don’t really remember them much. Sometimes it’s cool to imagine that my life is like Star Wars and they’re really alive or something, so I up play the dramaticness of his experiments.”

“I do that too!” Michelle exclaimed in an out of character excited outburst, “My dad left my mom and I when I was ten, so sometimes I make believe a story where he’s not really my dad and I’m part alien or something, completely ridiculous but better than reality.”

Peter smiled as he leaned against the table, “Sometimes I make up theories that my parents were like secret Asgardians who faked their death so they could go back to Asgard or something.”

Michelle snorted, “That would make them complete assholes, I know, but it would also mean I would be related to Thor, which dude, that would be so cool”

“Not to put a damper on your scenario, but according to reddit ‘Norse mythology experts’,” Michelle put quote hands up when she said _Norse mythology experts_ , “The only Asgardians who came to earth after the BC’s was Loki, and I’m pretty sure Loki is evil, sooo, that would make you exactly like Luke Skywalker.”

Peter laughed, “Imagine if I had Norse powers or whatever he has, and then we had this battle and he said,” Peter swatted his hand like a light-saber, “No Peter, I am your father.”

Michelle snorted, “You look way too into your theories, I usually just make up the scenario that my Mom secretly slept with Tony Stark during his partying days or something.”

“Wait, but wouldn’t that coincide with his missing kid’s birth?”

Michelle looked down, “Oh, yeah I guess it would.” Even though Michelle wasn’t a fan of the rich, her and almost everyone else in the world really felt for Tony Stark. He had saved New York, yet he hadn’t been able to save his son. 

Every year, when the anniversary of his son's kidnapping came on TV, Michelle, Peter, and every average person watched in sadness as they saw Pepper Potts and Tony Stark look like the light had been taken out of their lives.

The awkward silence continued for a few seconds until the beeping of the washing machine sounded, “Guess I’ll be going,” Michelle started taking the laundry out. 

Before she went upstairs, Peter called, “Our apartment is 17B!”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry made his fingers, which he pretended was a man, jump over buildings as his driver drove him from Queens to Manhattan and his family’s way over the top penthouse. The subway would have been much quicker, but of course his dad was so controlling he made sure that Harry was in sight at all times.

Harry wished he was still at Peter’s. It had been nice to play a video game, talk with his friend, do normal stuff, for at least a couple of hours. Of course his dad just had to have him home for dinner though. Not that his dad would be at dinner, no he would be off making an ‘important’ phone call or futzing about in his lab.

In case it wasn’t clear, Harry hated his dad, with a passion, what he had done...Well that was something for the history books wasn’t it. Harry hadn’t been able to tell anyone yet, he almost told Peter, but then, as if his dad was listening in on him, which Harry frankly didn’t doubt, his driver was there.

Harry walked up to the apartment lobby as his driver drove the car down to the parking garage. He used his key to get into the over the top fancy elevator. Everything in this new apartment was fancy. It was as if the people living here didn’t just have to be rich, they also wanted to shove it in everyone’s faces. 

Their neighbor’s, who Harry had been forced to dine with every week, were insufferable. They were snobby, pretentious, and fake, just like his Father was around them. When his Dad pretended to be all nice around guests, even though he was the opposite with his own family, Harry wanted to gauge his eyes out.

These angry thoughts circulated through Harry’s head as he walked through his apartment. Of course there were maids and attendants everywhere. Usually, Harry would scurry off to his room to do nothing, but today, he wanted to speak to his dad about Peter’s field trip.

Harry had this ridiculous hope that his Dad would allow him to meet Peter during the field trip. His dad was in a better mood recently though, and the time when he had to observe the lab, was during Midtown’s field trip to Oscorp, so Harry was optimistic.

Norman Osborn’s door was open, so Harry could see his dad talking to a portly Asian dude. From visiting the labs, Harry knew that this guy was the floor manager, so he was surprised to see him at his house. From the look of pleasure on his Dad’s face though, Harry assumed that the floor manager wasn’t there to tell his Dad that anything was wrong.

Harry stood next to his Dad, ready for a chance to spring his question on him the minute he stopped talking to the floor manager. He knew that his dad usually didn’t like spending that much time talking to his employees, unless they were brilliant scientists, so Harry assumed that his chance would come in the next 5 minutes or so.

“So Leeds, you’ve done a great job so far, not that there is really any talent in managing a lab,” Norman Osborn chuckled, “What have you come here to tell me? Nothing bad I hope.”

Harry noticed that Mr.Leeds’s forehead was glistening with sweat and that he was fidgeting nervously. That should have been Harry’s que to get out of there, since the floor manager was going to tell him something that was going to put Norman in a bad mood, but he was curious as to what was about to go down, so he stupidly stayed put.

“Well you see sir, it’s about the specimen...” Mr.Leeds paused for a few seconds, as if building up the courage to finish his sentence.

Norman, who was always annoyed with people who hesitated, yelled, “Well what is it Leeds! What happened to the specimen, the one who is worth ten of you.”

That seemed to make the guy more nervous, yet he stumbled out, “The specimen is missing sir, ever since this morning. We know you want no security footage in the lab where it’s held, so we couldn’t make heads or tails of where it went.”

Norman Osborn’s face was red and he had a vein bulging out of the side of his head, “You didn’t do your Goddamn job Leeds! Find the specimen! If it is in some way damaged, YOU’RE FIRED!”

Mr.Leeds slowly backed away and then hurried out the door with a “Yes sir!”

This was Harry’s chance to get out of there, but his dad noticed him and barked, “Harry, what do you want?”

‘I guess it won’t hurt to ask,’ Harry thought to himself as he said, “Oh um, Peter’s science class is coming tomorrow to the labs for a field trip and I was hop-”

Norman Osbourne cut him off, “You think I care about some field trip? Stop wasting my time! Martha! Martha! Will you get this kid out of here?!,” When his mom failed to come, he screamed out another, “Martha!”

Harry’s mom came to the office, dressed to the nines for some fancy event she had to go to that night. She gave Harry a glaring look, then ushered him out of the room. He heard his dad say, “Now put me on the phone with secretary Ross,” before the door was shut. Ends up, it did hurt to ask.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter came up from his lab soon after Michelle left. He made it to the apartment right before Michelle and her mom came. “So did you tell Michelle our apartment number and everything?” May asked as Peter came through the door.

She was seated at the kitchen table, now devoid of junk from the junk drawer. Aunt May was peacefully sipping tea while Uncle Ben worked on burgers. Judging from the cheese on them, Peter reckoned they were almost done.

“Oh yeah I did, they should be here,” Peter glanced at the clock, “Any minute now.”

“Hope your girlfriend and her mom like burgers slightly overcooked, because these definitely aren’t my best work,” Uncle Ben called from the kitchen.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Peter tried to explain in vain, “She’s just a friend, I like never talked to her before today.”

“Sure,” Uncle Ben started putting the burgers on individual paper plates.

“I swear, it’s not like that!”

“It’s okay sweetie,” Aunt May put her hand on Peter’s, “We won’t embarrass you in front of your girlfriend.”

Peter groaned as his Aunt and Uncle laughed their heads off at their charades. Luckily, the conversation ended when a knock was heard at the door. Aunt May answered it.

Uncle Ben left the burgers and stood next to May in order to properly greet the guests. “Thank you so much for inviting us over here,” she exclaimed, “I’m Alisha.” 

“Ben,” “May,” the two said as they shook the woman’s hand. May added, “No worries, we’re happy it worked out this way, goodness knows that patio barbeque hasn’t worked for the last 5 years.”

Alisha chuckled, “Yeah I wouldn’t know that, MJ and I just moved here during the summer, we’ve been finding it hard to find people who aren’t all cold to us. In Tennessee, everyone is so friendly, even in Nashville and Memphis” When her mom said _in Tennessee_ , Michelle found it hard not to roll her eyes.

“Yeah, it takes a while to make friends in this city,” May commented, “Wait till you go to Massachusetts, that’s where I grew up, people are super cold up there.” They laughed their mom laugh, while Uncle Ben introduced himself to Michelle.

“Why you must be Michelle, Peter’s told me a lot about you,” He winked, causing Michelle to turn beet red. Aunt May added, “It’s so nice to meet you.” Peter internally groaned.

Once Peter shook Alicia’s hand, with a, "nice to meet you Mrs.Jones," everyone was acquainted with each other.

At 7, the burgers were ready. Since the table could only fit 4 people, Aunt May, to everyone’s delight, made the executive decision to have everyone eat in the living room while watching a movie. Since the group also wanted to talk during the movie, because not everybody knew each other, Uncle Ben chose the first Star Wars, assuming that the average person knew all the major plot points of that movie.

He assumed right, for Michelle and her mom commented that they had already seen the movie a million times beforehand when the iconic opening credits rolled. Mrs.Jones sat in the armchair next to the couch, while Aunt May and Uncle Ben sat on said couch. Michelle and Peter sprawled out on the floor, munching on french fries, commenting on the movie, and just talking about random stuff which mostly included school.

“Sorry my Uncle was being embarrassing,” Peter told Michelle as they watched R2-D2 escape from the death star, “He likes to mess around a lot, Michelle.”

“Oh you don’t have to call me Michelle, my friends call me MJ.”

Peter looked at her in shock, “You consider me a friend after me not talking to you for the entire school year so far?” He inwardly cursed at himself. Why was Peter so bad at accepting people wanting to be his friend?

MJ took a defensive position, “Yeah, well, we talked for like two hours and you showed me your lab, so...”

“Oh, no I didn’t mean it like that,” Peter was quick to retract his statements, “It’s just that aren’t you mad at me for never reaching out and talking to you even though we sit together everyday and we go to decathlon practice together?”

MJ looked at Peter strangely. Was this idiot trying to make her dislike him? “Well I didn’t reach out either, so let’s call it even.”

They nodded simultaneously, then went back to watching the movie and eating french fries in silence. Peter always felt awkward around silences in a conversation, so he asked, “Wait, are you going to Oscorp tomorrow or the Met?”

“Oscorp,” MJ rolled her eyes, “Mrs.Warren wants me to broaden my horizons, what a bitch.”

“MJ,” Alicia called from the armrest, “Watch your language.”

“Sorry,” MJ said in embarrassment as she covered her mouth and blushed for what seemed like the one hundredth time this day. Usually she was able to keep up the appearance of being unapproachable.

“Peter is the same way,” May sighed in exasperation, “He seems to think that it’s okay for him to just cuss in front of us because it’s normal with his peers.”

“Oh May,” Ben teased, “You're sounding eerily similar to your mom with her, kids these days, slogan.”

May rolled her eyes at Ben’s teasing, replying, “Well I wouldn’t have to be the one to discipline him if you didn’t always insist on playing the devil’s advocate.”

“I’d like to think that you’re the bad cop while I’m the good cop.”

“You guys sound just like this old couple I nurse down at Queens memorial,” Alisha interjected into the conversation.

“Yeah, we’re becoming just like our parents,” May laughed dramatically, “It’s inevitable.”

“You guys are good parents to Peter though,” Alicia stated, “Even though you’re not biologically his parents, he’s lucky to have you.”

“And we’re lucky to have him,” Ben announced, happy that his nephew had finally found a friend and was having a good time with her. Life seemed to be happier for his family recently. After months of Peter acting sullen because his only friend was homeschooled, it seemed like the boy was finally coming out of his shell.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After MJ and her mom had left, and he had cleaned all of the dishes, Peter laid in bed thinking about his day. He thought about how crazy it was that he had made two new friends today. After months of being extremely lonely, Peter had made two, human friends in one day.

He opened his phone, the time read 11:51. ‘Whelp, looks like I’m only getting 6 hours of sleep tonight,’ Peter thought to himself. He looked into his snapchat, which had been empty for months, now it was filled with two messages.

One from MJ(Peter and her had exchanged snaps at the end of the night), which read: **see you tomorrow loser**

Peter frowned slightly at MJ calling him loser, but he then assumed that that was probably an endearing nickname.

The other one was from Ned, it read: **It was nice talking to you today are you going on the oscorp field trip tomorrow or the met one?**

Peter answered: **you too i’m going to the oscorp one**

Ned answered right away, Peter was surprised he was awake. He replied: **i’m going to the oscorp one too see you on the bus**

Peter: **see you**

Peter was excited for his two new friends to meet tomorrow. He wondered if they already knew each other, probably not since MJ just moved to New York. He hoped that they would get along at least, MJ sort of seemed closed off to new people and Ned was outgoing, but who knows, maybe they would compliment each other.

‘Jeesh,’ Peter thought to himself, ‘This feels like I’m setting them up or something, it’s time to go to bed.’

As his thoughts became more dreamlike, Peter wondered what Harry had wanted to tell him. He hoped his friend was okay. His dad seemed like a complete asshole. He was a genius though, and he was going to the guy’s lab. Right before sleepiness overtook him he was struck with a thought. If Harry was there tomorrow, Peter could introduce him to Ned and MJ! It’d be awesome to have all of his friends meet. As he thought about what tomorrow would bring, he gave in to the lull of sleep.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was super long, the longest chapter of a fanfiction I have ever made. There will be every two week updates, I promise that. If there aren't, scream at me in the comments of my google docs file, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nu0nstX4791EflXIyepWb5LDTRnwfOtdbJqmSFBZ70E/edit?usp=sharing  
> I think my writing here is inconsistent, but somewhat good. Please give constructive criticism.  
> Thank you Rathnorm for giving me the idea of putting dates on the chapters and giving constructive criticism. It is greatly appreciated.
> 
> PS.  
> Guess what opening lyrics of which song I took for the name of this chapter.


	3. There's Something Happening Here, But What it is Ain't Exactly Clear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is bit by the spider and weird stuff happens as a result

**November 15th, 2015**

“Yeah they’re talking about laying off some people down at the company,” Peter gulped down his cinnamon toast crunch cereal as Uncle Ben talked about his work with a worried frown.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Aunt May assured him, “Mr.Hanks values your work, and you do help teach the newer recruits some of the ins and outs of old house circuits, so it’s not like he can replace you.”

“That’s the thing,” Ben sighed, “With all of these new people from Mexico and China coming in, the company finds it cheaper to pay inexperienced people a non-living wage, what they’re used to back home, than old geezers like me a living wage for quality work.”

Peter stopped shoveling cereal into his mouth, “You’re not an old Geezer Uncle Ben! You’re 45, that’s like not even old age.”

Uncle Ben chuckled, “Well Peter, that used to be the case, but with the market rapidly globalizing and more people to compete with, a 45 year old just can’t compete with a 20 year old now in days. But don’t worry yourself about all that, with your brains, you’ll become your own boss, I bet you’ll be the next Tony Stark.”

Peter’s face reddened, “I don’t know about that Uncle Ben...”

An alarm went off on Uncle Ben’s phone, “Well looks like I have to go, bye Peter, have fun on your field trip!” He kissed May on the forehead, grabbed his coat, then hurried out the door, leaving Peter to think about the conversation.

Despite Aunt May and Uncle Ben’s assurances of the opposite, it was no secret to Peter that they were struggling financially. Even with two incomes coming through, it was hard to pay the rent of a multiple bedroom New York apartment on time.

Peter desperately wished he was 16 and could get a job. Everytime Uncle Ben came home exhausted from his work at the electrician company, or Aunt May had to pay for their Thai takeout in quarters and dimes from the change pile because her credit card declined, Peter felt an overwhelming sense of shame.

Aunt May and Uncle Ben never asked for him, even though they always seemed happy to care for him, Peter knew they wouldn’t struggle so much if they didn’t have to pay for all of his food and a bigger apartment so he could have his own room. He wished he could do something to help pay for all of their expenses.

Peter’s thoughts of responsibility were interrupted by Aunt May’s statement, “You should start heading to school right now Peter, you don’t want to be late for the field trip.”

The sound of his chair skidding across the floor was heard. Peter quickly grabbed his backpack, wearing it across only one shoulder, and left through the door with a “Bye May!”

Peter desperately hoped that he hadn’t missed the L-train. He ran down the stairs, almost falling down from his speed. Aunt May couldn’t possibly drive him to Manhattan on time, what with the traffic and their one car which could barely start since they almost never used it.

Peter ran past the bodega run by a family friend, Mr.Delmar. He ran across the street, almost getting hit by a car since he was in such a rush, and down the dirty subway steps. His backpack and the heavy books inside swayed side to side in an uncomfortable motion.

When he arrived at the platform, much to Peter’s relief, the L-train was at the station, just ready to leave. Peter jumped into the subway a second after the doors closed. With his adrenaline gone, Peter struggled to breathe, causing him to have to grab his inhaler out of the side of his backpack.

Asthma was great when it got him out of running laps during PE, but the worst when he actually had to run. Peter was finally able to breathe freely when the subway made its first stop. He grabbed onto a pole in order to keep his balance as he waited for another 7 stops.

To Peter’s surprise, he heard MJ’s voice behind him, “Hey there.” He turned around. There was MJ, dressed in her usual dark colored layers with a white t-shirt reading, ‘overthrow the patriarchy,’ in black letters. Unlike Peter, she looked perfectly unstressed and put together.

“Oh,” Peter said, surprise MJ was on the subway, “W-what are you doing here?”

MJ smirked, “How else do you think I get to school, loser,” she playfully punched his arm.

Peter chuckled, “Oh, oh, yeah that makes sense.” He looked around the crowded subway. Most people were looking at their phones as the train made its way across the Queensboro bridge. All of the seats were taken up, leaving the subway overcrowded. A sudden thought entered Peter’s head.

“Wait, have you taken this subway everyday? And I didn’t even notice?”

“Yep,” MJ popped the p, “I’m usually drawing in that seat right there though,” she pointed to a seat that was taken up by some lady’s bag.

“What do you draw?” Peter was genuinely curious. He noticed MJ blush for a second then say in a nonchalant manner, “People mostly, I like to sketch people in crisis.”

“Like who?”

MJ subtly turned her eyes to her left, where a guy in a suit was anxiously jabbering on his phone. Peter could hear him say, “That’s not what I meant Susan!”

“So you draw random people?”

“Well, not always. I also draw teachers from our school and people in our grade,” she dug into her backpack and grabbed a sketchbook, opening one of the pages, “This is a sketch of Coach Wilson a few weeks back.”

Peter looked at the drawing then laughed, “I know where that’s from! It was after that girl vomited on the gym floor.”

MJ nodded. The two spent the rest of their subway ride laughing at the drawings she had sketched of their teachers and peers over the course of the school year.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At school, the freshmen were instructed by the announcements to gather in two groups determined by which field trip they would be going on. The ones going to Oscorp were to wait in the gym while the school buses arrived, so Peter hurried to the place with Ned, who he had discovered was in his same home room.

“Dude, not to brag, but like my dad works as a floor manager in Oscorp and he told me that the stuff there is insane,” Ned talked with a proud air to Peter as they followed their homeroom out of the classroom and into the hallway.

“Really! That’s so cool man” Peter exclaimed as they walked down the hall, the teacher looked to Peter and gave him a shush hand gesture, so he squeaked, “sorry.”

“My friend Harry is Norman Osborn’s son,” Peter said this in a lower voice, matching the tone of his peers, which included Flash and some of his goons, who were also murmuring amongst themselves. Ned gave him an impressed look.

“He told me that the stuff Dr.Octavius is doing is pretty cool, but it can’t compare to Stark Industry.”

“Oh Yeah,” Ned replied. The group was close to the gym. “My dad actually works on the floor that Dr.Octavius works on, he said it’s cool, but I doubt anything can compare to a literal super-hero.”

Peter’s eyes widened, “Your dad works on that floor? I hope we get to see it, Harry told me that it was pretty cool.”

“I’m surprised your friend mentioned my dad’s floor,” Ned commented, “He hasn’t told me anything they’re doing over there because he had to sign an NDA.”

Peter nodded, they were now entering the gym. The room was filled with a multitude of students who were all chattering away in their different groups. Peter spotted MJ, sitting on the bleachers while drawing in the sketch book she had shown him earlier.

She looked up and then saw him and walked over. Peter looked over to Ned and said, “Oh so I want to introduce you to my friend MJ, I don’t know if you know her or not, but we’re like friends soo...”

MJ stood in front of the two boys. “Oh hi I’m Ned,” Ned, always the outgoing one despite his nerd status, reached out his hand.

“Michelle,” she took his hand and awkwardly shook it. Ned turned to Peter, “So how did you two meet?”

“We live in the same apartment.” “I have decathlon with MJ.”

Ned just looked at them, slightly confused by the two answers spoken at once. “Okay then.”

The group stood in awkward silence. Peter desperately wanted to interject with some conversation starter, so that his two friends could get to know each other better, but before he could, they were ushered to the two yellow school buses that had arrived.

The trio followed their peers out of the big, glass double doors and onto the back sidewalk of the school. The first school bus was filling up quickly, so the three entered the second one in order to ensure that they would be seated together.

At his middle elementary school, Peter usually sat in the middle of the school bus, alone, because Harry lived close enough to walk to the two schools. It was a different experience for him to all of a sudden have two friends sitting by him.

Peter sat next to the window with Ned sitting next to him while MJ sat behind the two boys, drawing in her sketchbook. Peter assumed that she wasn’t in the mood to talk, so he chatted away with Ned about Oscorp.

Peter was so excited when talking with somebody who shared his same love of science, that he didn’t notice Flash and his gang entering the front of the bus. The bully sneered at the two talking boys, “Well looks like the two losers Fatty and Penis Parker have finally found love.”

When Peter ignored him for a second, Flash continued, “I bet Penis Parker will be thrown out of Oscorp on account that his family lives out of a dumpster. Where did you even get those clothes, Goodwill?”

Peter looked up, now angry at Flash’s taunting. Maybe it was the fact that Flash brought up his family’s financial struggles, the fact that Peter could see Michelle glare at the bully from the corner of his eye, or the fact that Flash was alone, his friends already at the back of the bus, that made Peter finally retort after months of bullying from Flash.

He scoffed in new found confidence, “Yeah, well at least my parents didn’t buy my way into midtown. At least I have the smarts to actually earn a scholarship.”

A look of surprise came upon Flash’s face, immediately replaced by anger, “You’re dead!” It looked like Flash was about to lunge at Peter, so Mr.Harrington intervened.

“Mr.Thompson! Take your seat. And Peter, sit down as well,” he added in a harsh tone, “If there’s another mishap between you two, you boys will be forced to stay in the bus for the remainder of the field trip.”

Flash and Peter nodded fervently, a little shaken up by Mr.Harrington’s harsh reprimand. When Peter sat back down, Ned whispered, “Dude, that was so cool! Did you see Flash’s face he was like, oh crap I didn’t expect Peter to be such a badass.”

Peter smiled a little unsuredly, “Yeah I’m not exactly sure why I did that. Do you think he’s going to beat me up now, like in Karate Kid?”

Ned laughed, “Oh Peter, highschool isn’t like what it was in the 80’s, I doubt Flash will be better than you during a fist fight.”

“He might not be able to throw a punch,” Peter turned around to look at the only competent member of Midtown’s track who constantly followed Flash around, “but Kong sure can.”

Before Ned could respond, a notebook was passed to Peter from the seat behind him. He took the page that had been bookmarked and opened it with a curious Ned looking over his shoulder.

On the page was one of MJ’s sketches. The sketch was of Flash, perfectly catching his look of surprise morphing into anger in a few lines.

“Michelle drew that?” Ned asked, “That’s pretty good.”

Peter smiled, “Yeah she likes to sketch people in crisis.” He admired the drawing for a few seconds longer, then wrote,  **this is awesome** and handed the sketchbook back to MJ.

That almost made Peter glad that he had finally stood up for himself, almost. Peter had grown up being made fun of for most of his life with Harry. He knew that bullies probably wouldn’t become physical as long as he kept his head down and ignored them, rose above them. That’s what Uncle Ben always told him anyways.

After a few seconds of silence, Peter’s thoughts drifted to Harry. He checked his snap, even though he knew that Harry wouldn’t have been able to talk to him there since his dad locked his phone everyday with the exception of 3 to 3:15 pm.

Peter wondered if whatever Harry had to tell him had anything to do with his dad, or Oscorp as a whole. He wondered when he would get the next opportunity to see Harry. ‘Hopefully today,’ Peter thought to himself, ‘But I doubt it.’

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Welcome children,” the tour guide made her way through the middle pathway of the main Oscorp labs, leading a gaggle of midtown high freshman students, 

“Rather recently, Osborn industry, inc. has increased in prominence. It is dedicated to researching experimental chemical compounds, finding answers to problems that seem impossible to solve. We are also the leading global manufacturer in providing innovative materials for chemical processing.”

Peter was only half listening to the tour guide as she droned on about Oscorp. The tour group was walking over a glass walkway, overlooking the labs that Peter had read about in the past few weeks.

Reading about something and seeing it with your own two eyes are very different. Peter gazed at the modern looking work stations, that were 100 times cleaner than his own, in wonderment. 

He looked upon the different people in white lab coats, holding onto vials with various chemical compounds in them, reports, and computers. Some appeared to be recording data from different experiments while others seemed to be discussing said experiments with their colleagues. Peter hoped that someday, he would have the opportunity to work in a lab like this one.

“The Oscorp labs in this building focus on manufacturing chemically engineered products with a special focus on replacements of hazardous acids and solvents.”

Most of the students following the tour guide were, like Peter, only half listening. Ned stood on the other side of the walkway, placing his hand on the railing and looking onto the labs in wonderment in a similar fashion to Peter. Michelle was behind them, people gazing and remaining inconspicuous as always. The other students, like Flash, were either chattering amongst themselves or curiously looking around.

As they approached the end of the Walkway, heading towards what appeared to be an elevator down to the main labs, Peter was filled with excitement. He was going to see the experiments done by professional scientists take place right in front of his very eyes.

That feeling of excitement was replaced with suffering. For as the tour guide announced, “If you will follow me down this way, you will see-”

Peter interrupted the tour guide with a cry of pain, for a sharp, a stinging pinch was felt on his hand. The students beside Peter rushed away , as he lifted his hand to see what had bitten him. Surrounded by Peter’s blood was a huge, black spider, with two orange circles on its body.

Peter didn’t have a bad case of Arachnaphobia, he had dealt with spiders before, but when faced with a spider this big that had given him a seriously painful bite, he immediately flung it off his hand in irrational fear.

The spider landed on an unexpecting MJ, whose eyes widened, giving her a petrified appearance. She immediately came out of her stupor though, swatting the spider onto the ground with her sketch book.

Once on the ground, the spider was crushed by Ned’s boot. The boy had been standing there, having an inhuman trait of having no fear of spiders, he took the opportunity to crush the freaky spider with a stomp of his boot.

During this time, the pain Peter felt on his hand increased immensely. His vision blurred and his knees wobbled, causing him to fall down on the floor, holding onto his bitten hand. He heard Flash say, “Penis Parker is freaking out,” in a happy voice and Ned exclaimed, “Peter!” as he vomited onto the floor.

A multitude of voices rang out around Peter, but he couldn’t decipher who said them because of how sick he suddenly felt. He clutched onto his hand and slowly went from sitting to sprawling on the ground.

“Jesus Parker!”

“What is going on here Peter?!”

“Everyone Back!”

“EEEWW!”

“Peter!?”

“Dude, that was a big honking spider, what the fuck?!”

“Peter? Can you hear me? Peter?” Peter cracked his eyes open, he recognized MJ’s voice.

“Alright kids, let’s get into a single file!”

“See how I killed that thing?!”

“Parker, can you stand? What is it, son?”

“Peter, please say something!”

The last thing Peter saw before his already blotchy vision completely faded was Mr.Harrington, a policeman, and MJ, crowding over him. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next thing Peter knew, he was back on the school bus. As he slowly opened his eyes, he was confused how he had gotten there. He could see Ned next to him, and as he looked to the other bus seat beside them, he saw Mr.Harrington watching over him with a worried expression.

As soon as Peter seemed fully awake, Roger Harrington spoke to him, “We called your Aunt. She’ll be at school to get you by the time we get back. Are you feeling better?”

Peter looked down at his left hand. A white cloth had been wrapped around it. His hand was throbbing a lot, but the pain had decreased considerably. Peter felt incredibly tired, but he didn’t feel sick enough to throw up again.

He replied with an unsure, “Yeah, I just -- I think I was a little freaked out by that Spider though, it was huge.”

“Yeah it was,” Ned piped up from beside him. Mj, who was sitting directly behind the two said, “I mean you were just unlucky, anyone could have been bitten.”

Mr.Harrington smiled, probably because a student appeared to have not been seriously ill on his watch, “You’re aunt will take you to the hospital so-”

Peter was too tired to hear the rest of what Mr.Harrington was saying. He was too tired to care about the gossip about him that was being passed around on the bus, too tired to care that he only got the chance to see a small percentage of the Oscorp labs. He passed out on the bus seat, unaware of what was happening to him.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Norman Osborn was in his office, talking with his lawyer. His mind wasn’t focused on his blabbering lawyer though, he was worried about what that idiot Leeds had told him. The specimen that he had worked so hard to create, the only one that had the oz serum successfully sent through its DNA, was missing.

He looked down at his labs from the huge glass window in his office. The specimen could be down there, crawling about. It could be smashed by one of the many idiots who worked under him, thousands of hours of research destroyed. Norman did have one other fail safe, but it had come to nothing so far, unlike the spider.

His thoughts were interrupted by a huffing Mr.Leeds, trying to catch his breath as he walked up to Norman’s white, modern desk. “Mr.Osborn,” Norman Osborn’s lawyer stopped talking and turned to the floor manager.

“Seems there was an incident on the main laboratory floor. One of the Midtown high school students from the field trip, Peter Parker, was bitten by the specimen.”

Norman Osborn raised his eyebrows, “So you have found the specimen then Leeds. Contained it. You might keep your job after all.”

“Uh-uh, well I’m sorry to say sir but, the specimen was crushed and killed by one of the other students.”

Norman turned around to look at his floor manager, “You mean to tell me that thousands of hours of research was destroyed, by a HIGHSCHOOL STUDENT!”

Mr.Leeds cowered, “Uh, yes sir, that would be the case.”

“You're fired, Leeds, pack your shit up and go, GO!”

The no longer floor manager stumbled out the door. Norman was still heaving with anger, he was left with nothing, his specimen had died because it had bitten some stupid highschool student.

Another thought came into Norman’s head. Before he could expand on it, his lawyer piped up, “We have to worry about legal obligations Norman.”

Norman Osborn turned to him, telling him to deal with it himself on the tip of his tongue. “If the boy’s parents sue, they’ll sue us, not the school. We’re the billion dollar corporation here. We have to either settle immediately or we start building our defenses now and wait for the hit.”

The thought that had come to Norman’s head festered, this whole incident wasn’t bad at all, it was a golden opportunity. Human testing of the oz serum had been completed without Norman having to beg at the feet of some government official. Hopefully this human would have a more interesting response than the last.

“No, no, I have a better idea, let’s pick up the tab.”

Norman’s lawyer looked flustered, “B-but sir, that’s an admission of guilt.”

Norman poo pooed him, “I don’t care. I’m also going to send a nice fruit basket too. Why not.” An evil smile was plastered on the scientist’s face, creeping out his lawyer.

“Why sir?”

Norman ended the conversation with a determined look on his face, “I want to keep an eye on that boy.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“How’s Peter doing?” Ben rushed through the door. Despite his devastating day at work, the only thing on his mind was his nephew.

May was sitting at the table, holding onto a mug of chamomile tea. Her expression was contemplative, but she didn’t appear to be stressed. “He’s passed out right now, but the doctors said he was fine.”

Ben breathed a sigh of relief. When May called him from the hospital, he had feared the worst. Now he had only one problem to deal with. “How much is the medical bill going to cost?”

May gave him a relieved smile, “I was worried about that too, but the Osborn people picked up the check and even sent us a basket of fruit.” Sure enough, he could see an overly ornate basket of fruit sitting on the counter top.

“That-That’s good,” Ben slumped down into a seat across from May. The news he was going to tell her would ruin their day, even more than it had already been, but Ben was never one to hold off telling people the inevitable.

May must have noticed his weary expression and defeated body language, “Ben, what’s wrong?”

“I got laid off today,” he turned to look at his wife. Ben saw May’s horrified expression so he continued in a reassuring tone, “I couldn’t find another job today, but with my experience, I might be able to score a better one than I had, this might be a blessing in disguise.”

Ben and May both knew that wasn’t true, losing one income was far from a blessing, but they both knew from experience that it was always better to stay optimistic. “I can take a double shift at the senior center,” May blurted out.

“May you don’t ha-”

“Yes I do, if I don’t we won’t be able to pay the rent or pay for groceries,” Ben sighed in defeat.

“In the meantime I can work part time at Delmar’s. He needs a cook I know, and I’m sure he’ll give me the job.”

A thought crossed May’s mind as she heard the sheets rearrange in Peter’s room, “What should we tell Peter?”

“We shouldn’t worry him about this, not with him starting that new school of his and having to deal with kids like Flash Thompson.”

May nodded her head in agreement. The two both had a hatred for the boy after they had witnessed him bully Peter during an impromptu visit to midtown. Uncle Ben and Aunt May were certain that Peter would be miles ahead of him in a few years, but in the present, with Flash’s father practically funding half of the school, the situation was an unfortunate mess.

May took her husband’s hand, “Don’t worry Ben, we survived an alien invasion. We’ll pull through this like we always do.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**November 16th, 2015**

The next morning, Peter is incredibly drowsy and tired. He drags himself out of bed though, checking his snaps while feeling a bit too sick to eat any breakfast. Unlike a few days prior, Peter actually has notifications.

Harry sent him a snap, saying:  **Sorry Peter couldn’t meet your class at the labs my dad wouldn’t let me** . He followed the message with a frowny face.

Peter replied with:  **it’s fine i actually didn’t see anything since I passed out from a spider bite** . He imagined Harry would respond with a GIF of Skeletor saying  [Wat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBjhAqXg8MY) sometime between 3 and 3:15.

To his surprise, Peter received multiple snaps from Ned.  **how are you feeling?** A few hours later:  **Peter you have to look at the midtown meme account on instagram. I know you follow them.** Peter frowned. He hadn’t been on his instagram account since the beginning of the school year. What was happening there?

Peter scrolled down to Ned’s other snap before checking out the midtown meme account.  **Peter i’m so sorry i didn’t mean for this to happen.** He scrunched up his eyebrows in confusion. What was Ned sorry for?

Before Peter could get to the bottom of this mystery, May announced, “You better get going if you don’t want to be late for school.” 

Peter blinked blearily up at her, he really was tired. “Honey are you alright?”

Peter rubbed his eyes and yawned, “Oh yeah I’m fine May, just tired.” He grabbed his backpack as May replied with an unsure, “Okay then, bye honey. Have a good day at school.”

MJ met him at their usual spot on the L-train. Peter noticed that her usual snarky and closed off expression was replaced with one of sympathy and second hand embarrassment. “Hey MJ-wait what’s wrong?”

“Have you looked at the midtown meme account in the past day by any chance?”

Peter was starting to get worried, first Ned now MJ. What was going on in that meme account. He had scrolled through it a couple of times in the beginning of the year. The account was mostly made up of memes making fun of Mr.Harrington’s obsession with his ex-wife or inside jokes that Peter didn’t understand.

“Uh, no. Can’t say that I have. Wh-what’s on there?”

MJ sucked in a breath, “Just look it up on your phone.” The subway still had at least 6 stops to make so Peter opened his phone, knowing that he had time.

The account was filled with memes about him. There were no pictures of him, since everyone had their phones confiscated in the beginning of the field trip, but the captions were all recalling his moment with the spider.

One caption read:  **This dude deadass passed out from a spider** followed by a couple of crying laughing emojis. Another one was more on the nose, saying:  **Penis Parker fainted from his fear of spiders lol** . 

Peter turned to MJ. He didn’t know what to think about this. He knew that Flash liked to pick on him, but he never thought that the bully would be this mean. Instead of Peter’s retort to the bully resulting in a fistfight, they resulted in everybody in the school thinking he was pathetic, which was even worse.

Most of the commenters on the memes were either making fun of Peter or completely confused and out of the loop. MJ and Ned though, faithful friends, defended him with mixed results.

MJ commented:  **tf is this a shit throwing account now?** And  **i thought we only made fun of teachers lmao** . Nobody replied to her comments, probably because nobody really noticed MJ.

Ned tried to help in his own way, but unwittingly ruined Peter’s reputation even more. He posted an entire persuasive essay onto his story explaining how Peter wasn’t a loser or pathetic for passing out from a spider bite. He actually made some good points, from Peter’s point of view, but of course his classmates didn’t think the same way.

Reaction memes were made to Ned’s essay. Most people were posting phrases like:  **Fatty at it again, these losers are made for each other lmao. This guy needs to get a life lol. It’s just a meme.** Some reactions were the lenny face followed by the caption,  **hmmm wonder what this means?**

Peter put his head in his hands from embarrassment. Not only was he a loser, but he had sucked his newest friend into being a complete loser too. MJ, who had been sketching him this entire time, spoke up. “It’s sort of trendy to make fun of you right now, but it’ll die out in a week or so.”

Peter hoped that she was correct.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At school, it seemed like Peter’s entire freshman class was staring at him. Everytime he turned to look back at them, they would whisper amongst themselves. When Peter came into his homeroom, Ned glanced at him sympathetically. They didn’t have time to talk though, until lunch.

As he took part in his before lunch classes, Peter couldn’t help but be angry at Flash and this entire situation. Before, most of the student body paid little attention to him. Flash of course teased him, but it was just him and about 4 other guys. Plus, as the months wore on, their bullying became less and less.

Now though, everyone thought he was a loser. Peter was basically a social pariah. Worse, Ned had somehow gotten himself entangled into this mess, so now he was a social pariah too, because of Peter. He couldn’t help but feel guilty for something that any reasonable person would assume was not his fault. 

Peter knew that if Ben and May knew about this situation, they would reassure him that none of this was his fault and that in 5 years he would be going places while his highschool bullies would have peaked junior year. That still didn’t make having to endure another four years of being viewed as a complete loser any easier.

As Peter walked through the lunchroom, he became even angrier at that stupid spider with the wierd ass orange cirles on its bodies. He was also angry at himself. Why did he have to be so sickly as to faint from a stupid spider bite? Peter thought that his days of spending weeks at the hospital with pneumonia were over.

Ned joined him at the lunch line, which to Peter’s displeasure, was incredibly slow moving. He just wanted to grab his lunch and eat alone. “Dude,” Ned grabbed an apple, “I am so sorry about the thing I posted in my story. I thought it would make people lessen a bit on the fainting memes, but it made everything so much worse.”

Peter grabbed an apple and nothing else, he felt a little too sick to be eating anything heavy. “It’s not your fault,” he eyed Flash and his gang, who were strolling towards him, angrily. Peter closed his eyes, preparing himself to not react to any of the taunts coming his way.

“Oh no I got bit by a spider, Huaaag!” Flash did a terrible impersonation of Peter.

“Look there’s the two love birds, you guys are perfect for each other,” A member of Flash’s gang, Peter remembered his name to be Derek, pointed at Ned and him.

Sometimes, at the height of their taunting, Flash and his friends would jostle Peter a bit. They wouldn’t beat him up, but they would aim an unexpected kick onto his back pack or something like that.

Kong aimed a kick towards Peter’s backpack. Before he could carry it out, something weird happened.

He kicked Peter’s backpack, only to miss. The hairs on Peter’s arm rose as a sense, or something that he couldn’t quite explain, told him to jerk to the left. To his surprise, Peter saw Kong’s shoe rise through the air right where he had been.

Acting on an instinct that he never even knew he had, Peter grabbed Kong’s shoe and flipped him through the air. Kong landed face first on the ground, petrified and screaming. Everyone backed away from the two boys.

“Dude Holy-” Flash didn’t finish his sentence as he put his hand on the back of his head in pure bewilderment.

Peter turned to Ned, whose expression mirrored Flash’s and everyone else near them. A teacher approached the group, saying, “Hey, what’s going here?” As Peter looked down at his hands in shock.

Peter was so confused. Why had he done that? He never got physical with his bullies ever. More importantly, how had he done that? Peter was terrible in PE, having no muscles to speak of. How had he suddenly gained the strength and knowledge necessary to judo flip Kong, the biggest kid in his grade?

Before Peter could contemplate those questions further, he suddenly felt dizzy. He passed out in a similar way to how he had at Oscorp. Mrs.Warren hovered over his fallen body as his vision completely blacked out.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“AAAH!” Peter sits up, shaking with nervous energy. He looks around him. There is Aunt May, dressed in her usual 70’s attire and wearing a worried expression. Next to her is what Peter assumes to be a doctor. He’s looking through some forms.

At the end of the bed there’s a nurse holding onto a gurney. Peter looks down at himself, instead of his usual jeans and science shirt with jacket combo, he’s wearing a hospital gown. The room also smells strongly of antiseptic. Peter had been to his fair share of hospital rooms, and never has the antiseptic smell been this strong.

Before he can distract his mind further with thoughts of unusually strong scents, Aunt May speaks up, “Oh My God! Thank the-Peter are you okay?”

“Uh yeah, yeah I’m actually fine,” Unlike this morning, Peter actually feels fine. His out of the ordinary tiredness from earlier has completely diminished and his hand wasn’t throbbing. In fact, looking at his hand, Peter could see that his makeshift bandage had been taken off and the spider bite had completely disappeared. 

May rubbed his back, “You’re not fine honey. You fainted.”

“How many fingers am I holding up son?” Peter turns to look at the doctor. 

“Three,” Peter replied easily. He was always confused why his peers and doctors alike always asked him that question when he took off his glasses. It wasn’t like their fingers were all swirly, just a bit fuzzy.

The doctor continued his questioning, “Any dizziness? Blurred vision? Nausea?”

Peter doesn’t have any of those symptoms, so he replied, “No. I’m thirsty though, like really thirsty.”

The nurse at the end of the bed stopped what she was doing, “I’ll go get you some water, hon, be’ll back in a jiffy.” Before Peter could reply with a thanks, she had hurried down the hallway.

Once they were alone in the room, Aunt May asked, “Peter, what happened at the school?” His aunt looked worried, her hair was done in a messy ponytail and her face was devoid of makeup. Today was supposed to be her day off from work.

Peter looked guiltily up at his aunt and answered truthfully, “I-I don’t know, it just happened so fast and then I fainted again. I’m so sorry Aunt May.”

May pursed her lips. Before she could continue her line of questioning though, the doctor spoke up, “How’s your hand? The bite seems to have disappeared, but we don’t know for sure if there is any internal damage.”

“Oh yeah, no it’s fine,” Peter looked down at his hand, happy that at least one thing was going well for him today, “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

He must have looked too happy, because the doctor followed up with, “Have you been taking any drugs at all? Marijuana?”

Peter was slightly taken aback and after glancing at May, he could tell she was too. “No of course not.”

The doctor looked skeptical, “Now’s the time to tell me. We’re going to run blood tests and urine tests. So...”

“No! I swear. I wouldn’t even know where to get any,” Peter was flabbergasted that the doctor would think he took drugs. Sure a ton of kids in his class bragged about smoking pot, as if they were above everyone else for doing something ‘grownup,’ but Peter didn’t have any friends until yesterday. Much less ones that were into that scene.

Aunt May came to his defense, “The thing is that Peter has always suffered from ailment or the other. He has asthma and allergies. In fact, you know this doctor, when he was younger, Peter was in here every few months because of some sickness.”

Peter winced a little at May’s description of him. It was totally accurate, but still made him seem like a complete invalid.

She finished with, “Maybe the spider bite somehow messed with Peter’s system or something.”

The doctor rubbed his goatee, “Maybe… We’ll run a full blood work anyhow. And some x-rays, just to cover all of our bases.”

The nurse, who had already returned with some water, placed a needle on the metal gurney next to Peter’s hospital bed, “I need you to just relax your arm, okay? It’ll only sting for a sec.”

She rubbed the crook of Peter’s elbow with her gloved hand, looking for a place to inject the needle into. When the nurse turned to grab the needle, Peter looked down at his arm, only to see his veins bulge out in an abnormal fashion.

No one had noticed his veins do that except for Peter. May and the doctor were busily talking about Peter’s predicament. He scrunched his eyebrows together, Why did his arm do that?

Before Peter could fully contemplate what had happened, the nurse came back to his side, needle in hand. She attempted to prick his skin, only to have to almost shove the needle into him.

“Huh,” the nurse commented as she drew Peter’s blood, “Thick skin you got there.”

Peter didn’t say anything to that. He thought over what had happened over the past day and a half. Peter knew something strange was going on, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hi, could you take this to the lab and have them do an express on this one?” The nurse who had drawn Peter’s blood put the syringe onto the window of the front office then left with a, “Thanks.”

The guy who worked at the front office was browsing reddit, so he replied, “Whatever,” and paid no attention to the blood.

Unbeknownst to Peter’s doctor and nurse, or any of the hospital staff, a shadowy figure grabbed the syringe that held his blood and replaced it with another.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a secret floor in Oscorp, unmonitored by security cameras, Norman Osborn, his hitman Shaw, and his lawyer, all gathered around a hologram, viewing Peter Parker’s blood.

“Sir?” Norman’s lawyer spoke up. He didn’t know anything about blood or science, but he wanted to know what was happening to the boy. Peter Parker’s fate would probably determine how much work he would have to do in the coming months.

“The oz, it’s killing him,” Norman Osborn’s voice conveyed despair, not over a boy losing his life, but over the fact that his oz serum wasn’t successfully altering human DNA.

“How?”

“Well I don’t know do I?!!” A vein bulged on Norman’s head, which to most people who worked under him, was a sign to nope outta the room. Norman’s lawyer knew that if he let his boss take the reins for this predicament, he would be out of work, so he steered the conversation into the direction he wanted it to go.

“They’ll trace it back to the lab.”

“Yes,” Norman replied.

“Set the project back, maybe forever.”

“Yes.”

“How long does he have?”

“Not long,” the lawyer was surprised by Norman’s almost downtrodden expression.

“So he’s going to die.”

“Yes.”

“So, no matter what, he’s going to die?”

Norman sighed in defeat. He could still recover from this, but he was going to have to kiss those military contracts goodbye. Months of work had gone down the toilet, but if Norman didn’t do what his lawyer was insinuating, his dream of creating his oz serum successfully, would never happen.

Norman turned to his hitman with a determined look on his face, “Shaw?”

Shaw, who had been silent this entire time, said, “Taken care of sir.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Peter and Aunt May arrive at their apartment, drowsiness overtakes Peter once again. He takes a nap, until Uncle Ben wakes him up for dinner. “Peter, wake up, it’s time for dinner.”

Peter slowly opens his eyes, “Huhh, what?”

“It’s time for dinner Peter, you aren’t going to get better unless you eat something.”

Peter contemplated just telling his Uncle that he wanted to sleep, but then his stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten anything all day. All of a sudden, Peter felt a pain in his gut. His urge for food was stronger than it had ever been.

He got up, “I’m coming Uncle Ben, I’m coming. What’s for dinner?”

The two walked out of Peter’s room and into the hallway, “Well I made us some split pea soup, and Aunt May made her date loaf.”

Peter scrunched up his face in disgust. Every few months, Aunt May would attempt to make the same date loaf her grandmother made her during the 70’s. She would always fail, making Peter and Uncle Ben secretly gag as they tried not to hurt her feelings.

“We’ll eat the date loaf while watching a movie or something,” Uncle Ben reassured Peter. They both knew that while Aunt May was distracted, it would be easier to throw her date loaf away.

When the two came to the kitchen table, Aunt May had finished setting the bowls and split pea soup, “Oh Peter honey, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Peter reassured her, “Just, really really hungry, can we eat now?” Peter didn’t mean to be impolite, but his hunger overpowered everything else on his mind.

Probably because he was sick, Aunt May and Uncle Ben let his impoliteness slide, “Well lucky for you, I made my date loaf and Ben made his famous split pea soup, so you’re not going to go hungry any longer.”

The Parker family sat at the table. Peter immediately inhaled a bowl of his Uncle’s soup. Even though the ingredients in the split pea soup were subpar, almost rotten leftovers, Uncle Ben always managed to make it more than edible through garlic and spices.

After downing one bowl of soup, Peter quickly poured another one, his hunger not yet being satisfied. Uncle Ben and Aunt May stopped their conversation, which Peter hadn’t been listening to. “Woah there,” Uncle Ben said, “Slow down there Peter, you aren’t on a time limit.”

“Sorry!” Peter squeaked, he looked sheepishly at the table, then started eating his soup slower. He was less hungry now that he had already had one bowl of soup.

“So Peter, are you going to be okay to go to school tomorrow?” Aunt May asked.

Peter thought about her question. He actually felt perfectly fine despite his two fainting spells. The illness he had got from that spider was weird, but Peter reckoned it was going away. “Yeah, I should be fine.”

Uncle Ben and Aunt May nodded happily. After eating 4 bowls of soup, much to the astonishment of his Aunt and Uncle, Peter’s hunger was finally satisfied. 

The three decided on watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that night. They were a little tired of watching so much Star Wars and Peter’s second favorite franchise was the  _ Indiana Jones's _ one. Aunt May and Uncle Ben sat on the couch, forgetting their financial troubles for a couple of hours.

Peter laid down on the armchair, where he eventually fell asleep. He forgot about the whole midtown meme account fiasco, or even checking his snap to see what Harry had texted him. As his eyes drooped, Peter could only focus on Indiana Jones’s whip. An idea for what his Dad’s creation could be used for, sprung into his subconscious.

Uncle Ben and Aunt May carried Peter to his bed after the movie finished. They did the dishes for him while worriedly talking about how they were going to pay the rent for the upcoming month.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**November 16th, 2015**

Tony cursed to himself as he failed to find something remotely shady or illegal going down in Oscorp. Even with an AI that was at least 20 years ahead of its time, Tony could only find files of Oscorp testing how human tissue reacted to certain chemicals used in warfare. Of course Norman Osbourne now had all of the army, including a very shady General Ross, wrapped around his finger.

Tony wasn’t jealous, Stark Industry had pulled out of weapon manufacturing ages ago. He did have a seated interest though, in Osbourne’s main backer, Justin Hammer. Tony had assumed he was done with that annoying little man back in 2010, but of course he was out of prison, and backing something shady once again.

Tony was about to call it quits, maybe Just Hammer had turned a new leaf after all? Then Friday stumbled upon a correspondence between the basement level floor manager and Norman Osbourne himself. It was a quick message, reading:

**All files for Project Oz will be in paper format.**

‘What is this project Oz?’ Tony thought to himself. ‘And why would Norman Osbourne want all of its files non digitized?’

“Seems a bit unnecessary don’t you think?” Tony asked Dummy, U and Friday as he exited his lab. The bots whirled and beeped as he entered the elevator and told Friday to take him to the common floor of the Avengers compound.

Tony knew he couldn’t get anywhere by hacking, he had to have someone on the ground floor of Oscorp, reporting to him what this Oz project was. Whatever it was, Tony hoped that it wouldn’t be another extremis.

He couldn’t do that himself. Tony Stark was way too recognizable, even with sunglasses, actually, especially with sunglasses. He also couldn’t waltz into Oscorp with the Iron Man armour and demand to see what the Oz project was. Osbourne would just deny everything and Tony had no proof, without admitting he had illegally breached the floor manager’s privacy on a hunch.

There was only one person who could go undercover at Oscorp and not raise any suspicion. As Tony exited the elevator, he saw her right ahead of him, reading a book on the big couch in front of the flat screen TV. Tony walked right behind her, near the kitchen island that most of the Avengers used as a dining room table.

“Hey so Justin Hammer is out of prison.” He leaned against the kitchen island, hands in his pockets as Natasha answered, “Yes and?” not taking her eyes off her book.

“Isn’t it weird? That Justin Hammer is out of prison even though he was supposed to have a life sentence.”

“Some would say.” Again, Natasha didn’t take her eyes off of her book.

“And did you also know that he’s now funding Norman Osbourne? And all of his funds are going to a secret project that has moved all of its files to paper?.”

“Hmmm,” Natasha pondered, “Maybe Norman is trying to be old fashioned.”

Tony stopped leaning on the kitchen island, “Okay come on Nat, you know as well as I do that something shady is going down in Oscorp.”

“So you want me to go undercover, finding out what they’re up to?”

Tony clapped his hands, “You know what, here are some new and improved widow bites for you, they travel at least twice as fast as the one’s made in Shield, terrible manufacturers there by the way. They can also be hidden, disguised as bracelets.” Tony picked up the silver case that he had brought with him from his lab and put it beside Natasha on the couch.

“Thanks Tony, these will be perfect for Oscorp,” Natasha called before he could enter the elevator. She knew Tony hated it when people handed him anything, even favors. He usually wanted to be the one giving something to other people. So she added, “I was going to investigate there anyway, Steve asked me to earlier today.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this is a flaming pile of garbage. I didn't even proofread this, literately just dumped the words onto the page and hoped it was good. Please give constructive criticism. If you guys want to see the writing process and make comments on stuff, here is the google docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nu0nstX4791EflXIyepWb5LDTRnwfOtdbJqmSFBZ70E/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> Also kudos to anyone who knows which song I took the opening lyrics for this chapter title.  
> Also thanks to Rathnorm for suggesting the dates.
> 
> BTW: I hope that the bullying is accurate for highschool now. I'm homeschooled and don't have any friends so I don't know how highschool works besides from tv shows and fics. Lol.


	4. Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter discovers that he has powers.

**November 17th, 2015**

The next day, Peter woke up feeling energetic. Out of habit, he grabbed his glasses off his nightstand and put them on. Something was off with his glasses. Usually, when Peter put them on, he noticed a drastic improvement in his vision. This time though, his eye sight with the glasses on seemed almost blurry as compared with his regular eyesight.

Peter took his glasses off, very confused. Sure enough, his eyesight improved. It was as if Peter’s terrible vision had been cured overnight. As Peter surveyed the room, he discovered that his vision had not only been cured, but improved. Scratches on the wall and faint stains on the carpet, which hadn’t been visible before, could suddenly be seen.

Peter shook his head with disbelief and got ready for the day in a daze. First judo flipping Kong, then the whole vein thing, now this. What on earth was going on?

Aunt May and Uncle Ben were at the table, eating a cold breakfast while talking worriedly with each other. They stopped talking as soon as Peter entered the kitchen/dining room. Peter would have found that act strange, but he was so consumed with finding a reasonable explanation for what had happened recently, that he barely noticed them.

“Peter honey,” Aunt May asked as he sat down, “How are you feeling? You’re up early”

Uncle Ben gazed at him curiously for a second, “Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”

“Oh um yeah, I’m doing fine actually, really fine,” That was the truth. Peter was almost shaking from excess energy. He didn’t know where all of this energy came from, but it felt like he had just drank 10 energy drinks after sleeping for 12 hours. For the first time in his life, Peter felt the urge to exercise.

Peter didn’t have an answer for Uncle Ben’s question. He hadn’t yet fully processed the fact that his vision was suddenly cured overnight, so instead he asked, “Can I have some cereal?”

“Sure honey, just don’t eat all of it. This box has to last us for the month.” If Peter’s mind hadn’t been preoccupied, he would have been worried by that statement. 

“Thanks,” Peter grabbed the cinnamon toast crunch and poured so much that the bowl Uncle Ben had bought at GoodWill almost overflowed. Uncle Ben looked at him suspiciously from his magazine. First Peter didn’t answer his question, now he was all of a sudden eating more in a day then he had in the past week. Something strange was going on with his nephew.

Peter didn’t know how hungry he was or how much he was craving cinnamon toast crunch until he ate the first spoonful. From there, he practically inhaled the food, not even bothering to add any milk. 

To add to the list of strange things happening, the cinnamon toast crunch and everything else in their kitchen for that matter, smelled stronger than it had yesterday. From Uncle Ben, Peter caught a whiff of the faint smell of burnt and dirty wires. It was a smell that he usually only detected when angling his face close to a broken tech piece found in the dumpster.

Aunt May smelled like lavender shampoo. Peter had smelled that scent once, when he accidentally used her usual shampoo as body wash. Once Peter noticed those smells, a whole host of other scents, almost all super gross, made their way to his nostrils. He focused on the cinnamon toast crunch in an attempt to dispel them.

“Well I have to go now,” Peter looked up at his Aunt, “Wait why?”

“I have to work a double shift today,” Peter looked down at his bowl of cereal in shame, “It doesn't have anything to do with you Honey, don’t worry.”

Aunt May grabbed her coat and left right after Uncle Ben said, “Bye sweetie!”

The man studied Peter for a moment before checking the time, “It’s late, I better go to. Make sure to clean your bowl out, Bye Peter.” He left, leaving Peter alone in the house, which was looking incredibly dingy as he surveyed it with his inhuman vision.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter walked leisurely down his relatively quiet street in Queens. Since he had woken up so early, he had more time to catch the subway.

The street that he lived on was sort of an oasis of apartment buildings ranging from low income to slightly more middle class. Closer to Manhattan, near the subway entrance, his street developed into bodegas, gas stations, and random businesses. On the other side of his street, farther away from the city, lay abandoned warehouses that hadn’t been used since the 90’s, marked by broken wire fences and graffiti.

As Peter was accosted by some really gross smells that he had never noticed before, he took out his phone, only to be immediately blinded by the bright blue light. Peter still didn’t know why his sense of smell and sight were suddenly enhanced. His only guess was that these were symptoms of the spider bite. Maybe he was still sick?

After closing his eyes, and then slowly opening them back up, Peter discovered that he could somewhat control his vision and sense of smell. He focused on just looking at his phone, finding its bright light to become somewhat bearable and the distractions around him diminished in their relevance.

Unfortunately, there was no cure for the stench of sewer and garbage that plagued Peter’s nostrils. He lifted his green jacket slightly up his face which barely helped, but it was better than nothing.

As he continued walking towards the subway, Peter checked his snap. Sure enough, Harry had replied with a  [ Wat ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBjhAqXg8MY) , followed by  **that sucks dude, also super random. Maybe I could convince my dad to give you a tour?**

Peter smiled and replied,  **That’d be great. Hope we can get together sometime soon.**

Peter was interested in the prospect of visiting Oscorp once again, not just because of the science happening there, but also because he wanted to do a little digging into what was happening with him. 

Peter had already hypothesized that the spider that bit him, he could still remember the two orange circles on its body, was not a normal spider. He reckoned that it was somehow altered, thus why he was experiencing these weird symptoms. 

The next texts Peter viewed were from Ned and MJ. Ned sent him,  **Peter I hope you’re okay. It was awesome though when you flipped kong. Sucks that no one took a video of that.**

MJ sent a simple,  **Get well soon loser.**

After reassuring his friends that he was okay, Peter turned his attention to the midtown meme account. He hoped that they had moved on from making fun of him, but judging from the fact that he had fainted again, he wasn’t hopeful.

Unbeknownst to Peter, a black SUV drove up a block behind him, slowing to a standstill. Shaw, who was in the driver’s seat, told Norman Osbourne over the phone, “I have a visual.”

“The street isn’t busy, but there might be some people watching from the apartment buildings nearby,” Norman Osbourne sat in his office chair, casual sipping a drink as if he wasn’t ordering a hitman to murder a teenager, “Make it look like an accident.”

Shaw nodded, driving towards the boy focusing on his phone at freeway speeds. Before he could run into the target, the strangest thing happened.

Peter noticed the car driving on the sidewalk only when it was a foot away from him. Like yesterday with Kong, a sense that he couldn’t explain told him that something was behind him. This time though, the sense was a thousand times stronger, as if sirens screaming danger were playing on repeat through Peter’s head.

Peter’s body worked on autopilot as he effortlessly flipped over the speeding car. Before he could process his near death experience, Peter heard a loud crack. He turned around to find that the black SUV had run into a pole on the side of the road.

He started running towards the car, in an attempt to see if the passenger inside was hurt. To his horror, when Peter approached the black SUV, the man driving opened the car door and pulled out a gun.

Peter froze in fear, then immediately snapped out of it. Uncle Ben had taught what to do when faced with a gun. Peter turned around and started running zig zag to his apartment. He forgot about school as his mind raced with thought and theories concerning what had just transpired.

Shaw immediately called his boss once that kid ran away. He knew Norman was going to be mad at him, but given the circumstances, he had hope that his boss would be a little more forgiving.

“Report, is the Parker kid taken care of?” Norman sat alert in his chair, ready to get this whole ordeal over with.

“Sir, you are not going to believe this, but-” As his hitman told Norman what had happened, Osborn’s eyes widened in shock, then his mouth morphed into an evil smile. Thousands of hours of research had not been wasted after all, the Oz serum had finally fulfilled its desired purpose on a human.

“Sir, this mission can still be fulfilled. I can go to his home and-” 

Norman paled at Shaw’s words, then immediately exploded into anger, “Abort Shaw! Abort! I want to study that kid, not kill him!”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter stumbled down the stairs and into his makeshift lab as thoughts swirled around his mind, trying to make sense of what had just transpired. Peter gripped the doorway from the lab to his apartment’s basement. His knuckles turned white as the plaster crumbled.

Peter startled back and stared at his hands in shock. How had he done that? He turned to look back at the doorway. The apartment basement was rundown and filled with cracks, so Peter doubted that a handgrip indent would be noticed. Still though, he put his hands on his head in anxiety as a single question raced through his mind. What was going on?

Peter sat down in front of his PC. He thought about what exactly had happened over the course of 2 days. First he was bit by a weird ass spider. Then he fainted and felt tired. Then he had flipped Kong, the biggest kid in his grade, flat on his face. What was weirder about that incident was that Peter somehow knew that Kong’s foot was coming for him, seconds before it made impact.

Next came the strange way his veins had reacted when prodded at the hospital. Peter had had his blood taken many times in his life, so he knew that that was not normal. Not to mention that his skin was suddenly thick, for some reason. Actually, Peter had a good idea of exactly what that reason was.

Peter couldn’t ignore these abnormal occurrences anymore this morning. First he suddenly didn’t need glasses, which now that Peter wasn’t wearing them, his face felt weird. To add to that, now he could all of a sudden smell everything, causing New York to become almost unbearable.

Then the incident with the hitman happened, and Peter had no doubt that guy was a hitman. He was wearing a black trench coat and carried a gun around for Pete’s sake! Somehow Peter had jumped with inhuman strength over an entire black SUV car. At PE, Peter could barely perform a box jump.

The fact about what had happened a few minutes ago that confused Peter the most was that, like with Kong, he could sense the car coming before it hit him. While Peter furrowed his brows in concentration, trying to think up a logical explanation for all of this, he remembered something from his 5th grade science project on spiders.

Peter turned on his PC and started frantically typing. He visited a bug enthusiast website that had been a lifesaver for him 3 years ago. Peter quickly clicked on the spider hyperlink, sending him to a page that hadn’t been updated since 2006, but still had all of the information he needed.

**Many people confuse spiders with insects. Both belong to the phylum arthropoda in the animal kingdom.**

Peter didn’t bother finishing the introduction, opting to skim the article until he came to the snippet of information he wanted to double check.

‘Found it!’ Peter excitedly thought to himself as he read the article in detail again.

**The prosoma spiders have a good developed feeling mechanism that makes them capable of detecting movements of their prey.**

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that sentence meant. Spiders had a sense that detected their prey, a sort of danger sense, the same sense that had alerted Peter of Kong and the car. 

Peter leaned back in his chair, thoughtfully staring at absolutely nothing as he realized the implications of the information found in this article. All of the strange shit that had been happening to him, was because of the spider bite.

Peter had already made that connection before, but he was 100% sure now. That spider was not a normal spider, he was certain of that. Peter knew that no known spiders on the planet just gave people a sixth sense when bitten.

The answer to what exactly had happened to him was in Oscorp. Common sense told Peter that Oscorp had done something to that spider to make it give him these weird symptoms.

He visited the Oscorp website and studied it extensively, only to find nothing concerning spiders or animal testing. The only thing Oscorp was doing with animals was testing different chemicals with animal and human tissue.

After scouring reddit, 4chan, and even a science discord server for some scientific experiments Oscorp was conducting off books, or even just conspiracy theories, Peter found nothing.

He groaned in frustration. Peter hated dealing with uncertainties, and now he had many. What had happened to that spider that bit Peter? He knew that Oscorp had created it. No known spider species on the planet had two orange circles on its body.

Also why was a hitman ordered against Peter? He assumed it was because of this whole ordeal. Maybe Oscorp had ordered the hitman? Peter wouldn’t put that past Harry’s creepy dad. If the hitman wanted to kill him though, and knew enough about him to follow him on his walk to the subway, why wasn’t he here trying to kill Peter?

Peter was obviously grateful that the hitman wasn’t actively trying to kill him, but he was still confused. As Peter turned his head, he eyed the microscope on his work table. He may not be able to answer all of his questions, but he could clear up a few issues concerning what exactly had changed in his DNA to give him a sixth sense.

A few moments later and a drop of Peter’s blood was held in a sample container. Peter had never pricked his skin before, but it didn’t seem that thick as compared to yesterday with the nurse.

Studying his blood through a microscope created a whole new set of questions that Peter doubted he would ever know the answer to. Peter usually focused on chemistry and physics, but he had studied human blood under a microscope before.

He knew that regular human blood wasn’t supposed to look like his. The individual cells seemed altered. There was foreign DNA attached to them, that Peter assumed, in light of recent events, to be the spider’s.

After studying his own blood for God knows how long, and then googling random questions about blood that would probably put him on an FBI watchlist, Peter sighed in defeat. He wasn’t going to get any farther into his investigation of what had happened to him.

So far, what Peter had pieced together was that an abnormal spider from Oscorp had bitten him, giving him superhuman vision, smell, and a sixth sense. The word super made Peter think of the avengers. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor...Did the spider give him superpowers?

Peter couldn’t help but smile at that thought. Maybe the heroes he had idolized for so long weren’t so different from himself? He let the part of his brain that developed unrealistic fantasies create one where Peter was a member of the Avengers, gaining fame and prestige. He imagined fighting alongside them against terrorists, aliens, or whatever the baddie of the month was.

Peter immediately shot down that idea. He was just some random kid from Queens who couldn’t even do a single pushup and was bullied by a nerd who couldn’t throw a punch. Why would the Avengers want him? And plus, why would he want to join the Avengers?

The Avengers already fought the bad guys, constantly getting criticized by the media and not being able to have normal lives as a result. The more Peter thought about it, the more he decided that using his newfound powers to help the world that had done nothing but shit on him his entire life was a terrible idea.

It would only ruin his Aunt and Uncle’s, the people who had given him so much, lives.

With this thought in his heart, Peter took out his Uncle’s birthday present. He had already finished wiring the LEDs, now he just had to download code into the arduino. 

Before he could grab his supplies, a ton of sound input came into his head all at once. Peter gripped his work table as his ears started ringing. He could hear so many voices, conversations, arguments. 

Some random guy was watching  _ survivor _ in the apartment on the ground floor. Peter heard Jeff Probst talking about some challenge. A guy was arguing with his wife on the second floor. Peter knew it was on the second floor since the sound was fainter than the survivor one.

Pain filled Peter’s ears as all of the voices and sounds became much louder. Cars rushing across the highway, sirens, and the subway were deafening. Peter covered his ears, sinking to the ground, as he was able to hear somebody crinkling a bag of potato chips.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the lights were all of a sudden too bright, and the smell of old wires, that Peter had found on Uncle Ben, was too strong. Peter curled up in a ball as he closed his eyes and wished everything would go away.

He focused on the thumping of his heart beat that steadily decreased in frequency as the minutes passed by. ‘What was that?’ Peter thought to himself as his senses slowly stopped going haywire.

Peter already knew the answer. To add to his list of superhuman abilities, he now had super hearing. Because of the craziness of the day, Peter took this newfound ability in stride. What was one more?

Peter slowly stood up, stilling being able to hear more sounds than he ever could before, but it was like his brain was focused or something. Peter didn’t know quite how to explain it, but it was as if he could tune out certain smells, sights, and sounds, and focus on a single one.

He focused on his breathing, then found when not, sensory overload threatened to cause him trouble again. ‘Got it, my senses are going to be dialed to eleven unless I focus on something.’

Once fully feeling like himself again, Peter tested his new found ability. He focused on the survivor episode his neighbor was watching. He didn’t try to hear his neighbor’s conversations though, no matter how curious he was. Peter knew that would be a complete violation of their privacy.

It was still sort of cool to have super hearing, almost better than having a spider sense(Peter had decided to call it that.) He wondered how far he could hear. Peter focused on sounds that were faint. Despite his best laid plans, He unwittingly eavesdropped on a tourist couple visiting the empire state building.

‘Well this isn’t that bad, actually this is pretty great,’ Peter thought to himself as he continued gathering supplies for the task of completing Uncle Ben’s birthday present. After the initial shock of having powers like these wore off, Peter was pretty nonchalant about them. 

Yeah, he could sense danger and his senses were enhanced, but they weren’t going to change his life, at least not for the worst. Peter could probably use these abilities to improve his life somehow. 

As he grabbed the cord used for attaching his computer to the circuit from the table filled with scattered tech from the dumpster, Peter’s eye caught sight of a mechanical watch. An idea from his subconscious resurfaced, causing him to immediately forget about Ben’s almost done Birthday present.

He grabbed the watch and walked to the work table centered around chemistry. Sure enough, there were a couple of empty vials that had once been filled with his father’s formula, or web fluid as MJ had coined it. Next to them, were all of the components Peter needed in order to test out his idea.

He spent the next few hours taking apart the watch and unmixed web fluid. Peter finally had an idea for what his father’s work could be used for, and it came from Indiana Jones no less. 

The work was a good distraction for Peter. All of the thoughts and unanswered questions still swirled around in his mind, but they took a backseat to the thought of spraying web fluid out of a watch to form a rope, or even just to coat something with web fluid. Peter wasn’t entirely sure how the web fluid would react when squeezed through a tiny hole.

After using spare parts from multiple sources to alter the inside of the watch, Peter was finally ready to try out his invention. He poured the web fluid into an area of the watch. He pressed a button on the side and…

Peter was about to say viola in his head, but the result of his experiment was not what he had expected. Instead of the web fluid reaching out to the wall five feet away and sticking to it, it gurgled meekly out.

Peter didn’t give up after that failed try though. He increased the speed of the spinners inside the watch and tried again. The second try exploded the watch much to Peter’s dismay, but he was still glad it was different from the last.

The hours whizzed by as Peter altered the new watch he had dissected more and more. None of the attempts were successful, but Peter was hopeful that he at least was getting closer.

A game changer for Peter’s invention were the hundreds of small little vials he found in one of his parent’s old boxes. Peter had forgotten these things even existed, they served no purpose for any experiments that he knew of.

Now though, Peter knew exactly what these canisters could be used for. He poured the web fluid into one, then inserted it into the watch. Before, Peter would just pour the unmixed fluid into the opening, making it less compact.

Peter almost screamed with excitement as the web fluid shot out of the watch and onto his lab’s wall, forming a perfect rope. The end of the rope was attached to the wall in a frayed manner, like a spider’s web. ‘Ironic,’ Peter thought to himself.

Before he could study the rope any further, a shrill voice was heard from the basement stairs, “Peter! Get your ass up here!”

Peter glanced at the small window placed on the corner of his lab. The sky was already dark. A flood of memories and thoughts came back to him. “Oh crap.” 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**November 17th, 2015**

Pepper was eating a salad when Natasha strode into her office, looking almost identical to when they had first met. Pepper couldn’t say she was surprised though. Nat and her had been meeting up for weekly lunches ever since 2012.

It started when Pepper took over the PR for the avengers. Natasha, knowing all of the ins and outs of the team, decided to help Pepper with going about making the avengers the good guys in the eyes of the media. She knew every avenger’s strength and weakness, so her input was invaluable.

As time went on, their meetings devolved into complaining about the men they had to deal with at work, and talking about random aspects of their lives. Sometimes, when the Black Widow wasn’t needed on a mission, Pepper would bring over some wine to the compound and they would spend the night watching cheesy hallmark movies and gossiping about people on the team.

Natasha was carrying a folder, so Pepper assumed that she either needed her help with one of the solo missions she did every other week, most had to do with tracking down Bruce, or she was about to present a strategy to a PR problem that the Avengers were facing. Seeing as there hadn’t been any controversy the past few months, Pepper assumed it was the former.

“So, Nat, what brings you to my office?” Pepper took a bite of her quinoa.

Natasha smiled and took a seat, “You’ve probably already guessed, Tony sent me on a solo mission to Oscorp. I was wondering if you could do a friend a favor and mark me as former floor manager for Stark Industry.”

Pepper faltered a bit at the mention of her former boyfriend, or current boyfriend on a break. It was complicated. Things hadn’t been the same since… Pepper didn’t want to think of that, so she focused on the task at hand.

“That could be done in 2 minutes,” Pepper visited the proper directory on the ipad that she had been scrolling through while eating lunch. She crunched a couple numbers and edited some names, “You’re still using the cover, Natalie Rushman, right?”

“Yes.”

After a minute, Pepper finalized the edits, “You’re good to go Miss Rushman.”

“Thanks Pepper,” Natasha must have noticed her sad expression, probably because that woman didn’t miss a thing. She added, “So did you fire that guy at the marketing compartment yet?”

Pepper huffed, “No, unfortunately he’s still valuable so I can’t fire his ass.”

The two friends laughed as they shared stories about what was happening in the separate work places. None of the topics they covered were about anything of great importance, so the conversation was a nice distraction. Pepper’s grief that always sprung up during the quiet times in the fall was momentarily forgotten.

Going undercover at Oscorp remained in the back of Natasha’s mind. She wondered what was going on in Oscorp, what this oz project was all about. Her best guess was that it was another science corporation’s attempt at recreating the super soldier serum. Whatever was going on, Natasha was determined to get to the bottom of it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Norman Osborn studied Natalie Rushman’s background information. Her time at Stark Industry, coupled with all of the global experience she had, made the woman a perfect choice for a new floor manager.

Nevertheless, Norman wanted to go through everything himself before telling Miss Rushman to start in the morning. As the incident with Leeds showed, nobody could be trusted with even the most simple tasks anymore.

Despite the troubles brewing during the past few days, Norman Osborn couldn’t be in a happier mood. The oz serum was finally successful, and Norman had proof. Justin Hammer and General Ross would no longer be nagging him for results. He had results. 

For the first time since the 1940’s, another super soldier had been created. With Norman being the one to create the super soldier, self pride couldn’t cover what he felt towards himself. 

And if Norman’s calculations were correct, which he had no doubt they were, that gangly teenager, Peter Parker, was ten times stronger than Captain America. Now all Norman had to do was test his experiment.

He knew he couldn’t just have Shaw forcibly take his blood. Taking an experiment’s blood was a delicate process, having to be done in the lab. Plus with his strength, Norman doubts Shaw will be any match for someone injected with the oz serum. Then Norman would have to somehow get that Parker kid into his lab, and take his blood by trickery. Maybe-

His thoughts were interrupted by Harry, opening and closing his office door. Harry had been standing outside, contemplating if he should ask his dad for a favor or not. 

It was a shame that Peter wasn’t able to tour the Oscorp labs, and from a spider bite no less, how random. Harry felt bad for his friend, since he was the one who had the science obsession after all. If anyone deserved to tour his father’s labs, it was Peter.

Now though, standing before his dad, Harry was all of a sudden having second thoughts on asking him. He probably wouldn’t say yes anyways, leaving Harry to deal with a scolding but nothing to show for it.

Before Harry could make an excuse and leave though, his father said, “Well what is it that you want Harry?”

He looked thoughtful, but not mad. This was actually the happiest Harry had ever seen his dad for a long time. Harry decided to go through with his question after all.

“So you know Peter, Peter Parker, my friend back in elementary and middle school? You said you approved of him sir.” Harry paused, seeing the surprised yet approving look on his dad’s face caused him to continue in earnest.

“He was supposed to go to a tour of midtown two days ago, but he couldn’t because well, this is going to sound crazy-”

“He was bit by a spider,” an uncharacteristic smile could be seen on Norman’s face. Harry was about to ask how his dad knew that, then realized that Peter had been bit in Oscorp, of course his dad knew what had happened.

“And since your pal missed his field trip you want to take him on a tour of the labs.”

“Yes sir, if that is alright. We’ll only go on Doc Ock’s floor where he’s coding the bionic arms, since that’s the only floor I’m allowed to go on anyways.”

Norman put a proud hand on his son’s shoulder, “That is more than alright son. Have your friend come to the labs right after school.”

Harry stammered out a, “Thanks dad,” then quickly left. As he snapped Peter the news on his phone, since it was 3:10, he couldn’t help but be confused by his dad’s sudden change in attitude. 

He was happy with his dad’s change though. Maybe the guy wasn’t so bad after all. Yeah, his dad was eccentric, obsessed with his work, but that was dedication. The stuff that he injected him with, well his dad probably knew it would do nothing to Harry. It was probably vitamins or something. Whatever the case, Harry was ecstatic that for the first time in his entire life, his dad wasn’t disappointed or screaming at him.

On the other side of the door, Norman Osborn called Doctor Octavius. “Hello, Norman, the specs will be done within the hour.”

“Otto, I have something I need you to do.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So I get a call at work, and-and the principal’s office says that he didn’t even go to school today!” 

Aunt May and Uncle Ben were cornering Peter while he leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. They both wore matching expressions of anger and disapproval, making Peter bow his head in shame. He rarely made his aunt and uncle mad. 

Why had his stupid brain decide to forget school? Oh right, because Peter all of a sudden gained weird spider super powers and he wanted to figure out what was happening. 

Always the good cop, Ben said in a gentle but firm voice, “Where have you been all day Peter?”

“I was in my lab,” At least Peter didn’t have to lie about that.

“What were you doing?” 

He contemplated telling May and Ben the truth, but the words died in his throat. Peter still didn’t completely understand what had happened, so bothering them with his problems wouldn’t solve anything. Plus would they even believe him? Peter’s sixth sense only popped up when he was in danger, and he doubted he would ever be in danger around his Aunt and Uncle. 

“Hello?” Uncle Ben broke Peter’s silence. He was confused why his boy, who was always talking his ear off, was all of a sudden quiet and vague in his answers. Ben knew something was going on with his nephew, but he wasn’t sure what.

“I didn’t feel like going to school today, alright?!” Peter sullenly stated.

Aunt May hardened her expression after hearing Peter’s reply. She had hoped that teenage angst skipped over her nephew. “Didn’t feel like going?” Aunt May almost laughed as Peter gazed at her angrily, “He didn’t feel like going!?”

This was ridiculous, Peter had every right to not feel like going to school. With only two people not bullying or whispering about him everyday, school sucked, “School isn’t the party you think it is, alright?”

Uncle Ben narrowed his eyes, he was tired of this uncalled for attitude, “Well, you’re not supposed to be having a party, young man, you’re supposed to be in school to learn!”

Peter paled at Uncle Ben’s “young man,” he only said that when he was truly pissed. He nodded his head, turning his line of sight to the ground again, “Yeah, I-I know.”

Aunt May noticed Peter’s change in his defiant attitude. She had been told by the principal about the bullying Peter had faced during the past few days, and even before. May felt bad for her nephew, but bullying was no excuse for him to forego his education. “Now I know that what happened on the field trip was embarrassing. I can see that but-”

Uncle Ben saw Peter put a hand to the back of his head and brace himself against the wall with the other hand. His uncharacteristic actions were worrying Ben. Maybe the sickness he got from that spider was worse than the doctor’s had told them? And Peter was covering it up because he didn’t want to feel like a burden? That would be something his nephew would do.

“Are you feeling alright, son?”

For whatever reason, well Peter guessed it was some other symptom of the spider bite, sweat poured out of his pores and he felt incredibly angry. Of course he wasn’t feeling alright! 

He could smell the disgusting trash from their kitchen and the neighbor’s disgusting trash along with the sewage from their entire apartment complex. Peter could see every tiny wrinkle on his Aunt and Uncle’s faces, the dark circles under Aunt May’s eyes that were being covered by makeup. 

He could hear every conversation going on in their apartment. All of the voices and arguments along with every siren in New York City made Peter’s ears ring as everything morphed together. It was too much input. Peter yelled, “I’m fine!” causing him to focus on his aunt and uncle, their steady breathing, so he didn’t repeat the same incident from earlier.

He angrily tugged his hand off of the wall, only for pieces of drywall to be stuck to his fingers. Peter looked at his hand in shock. It was as if-his hand-it was stuck to the-

Uncle Ben and Aunt May were too taken aback by Peter’s statement to notice what had happened. “Peter?”

After a moment of silence Aunt May put her lecturing finger up, “Uh, who exactly do you think you’re talking to with that mouth?”

“Maybe you need to go to your room for the night and think about things,” Uncle Ben held the same disapproving expression as Aunt May.

Peter stared at the two in indignant shock. They were treating him like a child. They didn’t even know what was going on. “Go to my room!? I’m fifteen years old!”

“Go,” was Uncle Ben’s only reply while Aunt May remained firm by his side. They weren’t going to deal with this type of behavior. The two decided to talk with Peter once he calmed down.

“God!” Peter stomped to his room with a humph. He slammed the door as Uncle Ben and Aunt May looked down their hallway with a worried expression. What was going on with their nephew?

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter huffed, laying on his bed as angry thoughts swirled through his head. Aunt May and Uncle Ben had no right to do that! He was just trying to figure out what was going on with himself. Plus Peter was the perfect kid, his Aunt and Uncle never had to discipline him ever!

While his classmates went to parties acting out like regular teenagers, they posted it on instagram and received no repercussions. Peter skipped school once and his aunt and uncle were all up in his case about it. He didn’t even do anything wrong. He was literally in his lab the entire day!

As his anger subsided a bit, the rational side of Peter’s brain took over. Yeah, he had skipped school holed up in his lab, but Aunt May and Uncle Ben didn’t know that. For all they knew he was smoking pot, like that doctor had implied. The more Peter thought about it, the guiltier he felt.

May and Ben didn’t ask for him, yet here he was making their lives harder. They paid for his every expense when it would have been just as easy to dump him into foster care. Peter had no memories of his parents, besides from pictures, so Aunt May and Uncle Ben had been the only adult figures in his life to step up to the plate and raise him. He would forever be in their debt.

Peter sat up in his bed, deciding to apologise to his Aunt and Uncle and tell them what was going on. As he did though, his fingers brushed against the drywall that had unstuck once he calmed down. Peter looked down to the broken pieces of plaster, suddenly remembering what had happened.

He took off his shoes. Peter was going to test something out.

On an impulse, he put his hand against his gray bedroom wall, almost forgetting about apologising to Aunt May and Uncle Ben. He mentally told his hand to stick to the wall. To Peter's amazement, when pulling very lightly on his hand, he didn’t want to ruin more of the apartment’s walls, his hand was stuck.

He stuck his feet and other hand to the wall and started climbing his bedroom like a spider. Peter climbed up the wall and onto the ceiling, hanging level with his ceiling fan that never worked. Peter smiled as he saw his Albert Einstein theory of relativity poster from an upside down angle.

‘This is so cool!’ Peter thought to himself. Not only was his senses enhanced, which was also a burden but still amazing, and he had a sixth sense to warn him of danger, but he could now stick to things. The pros of that spider bite definitely outweigh the cons. 

Peter momentarily forgot he was hanging from the ceiling as his super hearing picked up sound from his Aunt and Uncle’s conversation. Their murmuring formed into distinct words as he focused his super hearing on their voices. Peter never imagined that sentence would ever come out of his brain. These powers were officially awesome.

“He’s just a kid May, going through some growing pains that’s all. I’m sure this phase will pass,” Peter heard Ben’s reassuring voice sounding through the kitchen.

“I know Ben,” Peter heard the soft scrape of his family’s wooden chairs against the tiled kitchen floor, “I guess I’m just worried about our finances is all, and I took it out on Peter. I shouldn’t have done that. Goodness knows he’s going through a lot with the bullying and all.”

Peter’s interest perked up with the mention of financial trouble. What had happened?

“Don’t worry May, Peter won’t hold a grudge and he’ll deal with the bullying. High School kids are gruesome but in 4 years, he’ll fly right by them,” Peter’s face burned with embarrassment at the compliment. Nobody was even with him, but it was awkward to have someone praise him regardless.

“As with our finances, Delmar gave me the job,” Peter’s eyebrows furrowed. Why would his Delmar- Before he could finish that thought, Aunt May piped in, “That’s great honey!”

“If we forego cable this month, and skimp a bit on groceries, we’ll be able to make the rent.” Peter heard May’s sigh of relief as his brain filled in the missing pieces.

He did a backflip off the ceiling and onto the ground, as if it was second nature, but the excitement Peter had felt before was gone. It was now replaced with guilt. Uncle Ben had lost his job, making his Aunt and Uncle more worried about their finances than they already were, and Peter had added to their problems.

Their conversation turned back to murmuring as Peter stopped focusing on his super hearing. He needed air, a place to think, some fresh air. All of these discoveries were happening too close together and Peter couldn’t figure out how he felt about them.

His gaze met his window. Besides the street lights and blinkers from the cars that sped up and down his street, outside was dark. Dark enough for a teenager to crawl down an apartment wall without being seen.

Before he could convince himself not to, Peter grabbed a dark hoodie and opened the window. He peered down at the pavement below. It was a 7 story drop to the bottom if he fell, but he wouldn’t fall, because he could now stick to, well drywall at least.

Peter hung his foot over the edge of his window and placed it over the dirty stucco exterior. Sure enough, it stuck. Peter wore a triumphant smile as he retreated from his room, sticking entirely to the outside of his apartment building. Barefoot, Peter shivered in the chilly November air, but he was too amazed at his abilities to really care.

He effortlessly crawled down the wall, making sure to position himself in the dark spots and shadows. With his super hearing, Peter could hear a couple of voices coming from the sidewalk. They sounded drunk though, so he wasn’t too worried.

Peter met the ground and then made his way to the sidewalk, walking away from manhattan and towards the abandoned warehouses on the outskirts of Queens. As he ran, he didn’t worry about other people looking at him. The people of New York probably wouldn’t question a random kid running on the sidewalk barefoot, what with the amount of strange stuff one saw on a daily basis in the city.

As he ran, a lot of thoughts crossed Peter’s mind. Most of them were about his family’s finances. Some of them were about who he should tell about his powers, if he told anyone. 

Peter definitely didn’t want to tell Aunt May and Uncle Ben. They already had enough on their plate. He didn’t know if he should tell MJ and Ned, probably not since he had only known them for a few days. Peter didn’t know if they were mutant phobic or not. Not that Peter was a mutant, he had read that those powers only manifested when one was either born or 12, still, they might think so.

Harry would be the only one Peter could tell, not over the phone though, because his dad might be listening in. Heaven knows Peter didn’t want his dad to know about his powers, considering how creepy he was and the fact that he might be behind them. 

Peter had read some files on Hydra back in 2014. He had read history books about mutants or people with powers being turned into laboratory experiments and tortured. Peter shuddered at the thought. He wouldn’t put it past Norman Osborn to do that in the name of science. 

He stopped, when a sudden thought hit his mind. Was that what Harry had been trying to tell Peter? That his dad was doing some shady experiments? That would explain how he gained his powers. Thinking of that, Peter decided he didn’t want to tell anyone about his powers, not until he was sure that the benefits of telling someone outweighed the danger he could be placing on himself and whoever he told.

With that thought in mind, Peter continued running towards the abandoned warehouse neighborhood. His feet felt dirty from the asphalt and Peter was a little cold, but despite that, he felt stronger than he ever had before. Peter’s asthma didn’t bother him at all and he could see graffiti on a brick wall from half a mile ahead. 

Peter tried something out. That spider bite had given him powers… Did those powers include enhanced running.

The answer was found to be a resound yes as Peter lengthened his strides, running almost the same speed as the cars that were rushing down his street. For someone who struggled running a single lap during PE, it was exhilarating to suddenly rush past chain link fences and apartment complexes with super human speed.

As Peter continued running, not even caring what the random passerbyers thought anymore, cheap apartment buildings gave way to dilapidated warehouses. The sidewalks became increasingly more cracked and no trespassing signs were posted on every other piece of broken chain link fence.

Peter paid no heed to those signs, he knew from the times when Harry and he explored this part of town that nobody really cared who lumbered around the once used factories. The signs boasting of surveillance cameras were only there to scare away the homeless.

Showing off a somewhat new found power, Peter jumped over the fence positioned in front of an old car factory effortlessly. He had already somewhat known that he had the power of… Jumping high? Peter ultimately decided on using the term inhuman acrobatics, since he had done a flip over the car this morning. 

Peter was ecstatic as he made his way over to the warehouse that he knew had cars weighing at least 500 pounds. Going from skinny asthmatic kid who couldn’t throw a punch, to someone who had superhuman jumping and running, or probably just endurance, made him giddy with joy. Now he just wanted to see if super strength was on his growing list of powers.

The door to the warehouse was barred shut, but that was no problem for Peter. He grabbed onto the concrete walls and started climbing up the wall like a spider. From the last time Peter had been in this place, back when it was more accessible, he had seen some large holes on the high ceiling.

Peter grasped the corner of the wall and roof made of gravel, heaving himself up. He ended up jumping high in the air and landing on top of the roof in an over the top superhero stance he had seen Iron Man use once on TV.

The gravel tickled Peter’s feet, sensitive from the cold, as he surveyed the roof for cracks. All around him were rooftops and walls. Towards Manhattan, if Peter squinted, he could see the windows on his apartment building.

Once a large hole was found, Peter did a series of complicated twists, gracefully landing on the ground with the same superhero pose as before. He brushed the dust off of his pants and scoured the large open room for any heavy objects.

‘Aha!’ Peter thought to himself as he found a pile of rusty cars. Five of them were stacked against each other. Peter briefly wondered what, whoever used to own this old factory was going to do with the piles of junk. He brushed those thoughts away, Peter was dying to know if he had super strength or not.

His question was answered as he positioned his hands onto the bottom car in the stack. As he lifted the cars into the air with minimal effort, Peter smiled triumphantly. The rusty squeaking and scratching hurt his enhanced ears, but he didn’t care. Him, Peter Parker, officially had super powers. The possibilities were endless.

The cars were thrown to the side of the building with inhuman strength, causing a ruckus sounding of rusty metal clanking together.

Peter did a backflip with joy, because he could totally do that now. He wasn’t sure why he had these powers, a million questions still remained at the back of his mind, but that didn’t matter. Because with his abilities, Peter could take on the world. 

Aunt May and Uncle Ben wouldn’t have to worry about paying the rent, in fact they wouldn’t have to live in a shitty apartment anymore. Peter could go to the olympics, or become a pro-wrestler and make a ton of money. He could repay Aunt May and Uncle Ben for all of the sacrifices they had made for him over the years. He would no longer be a burden.

“I love that freakin spider!” echoed through the abandoned car factory.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter quietly crawled into his room. He carefully slid his window close without making a sound. Peter could hear the even breathing of his Aunt and Uncle, so he assumed that they were asleep, but he didn’t want to risk them knowing he had snuck out in the middle of the night. The two were already disappointed in him as it was.

Peter glanced at the alarm clock stationed near his bed. It was 3am. ‘Looks like I won’t be getting much sleep tonight,’ Peter thought, but he found it hard to be dismayed. The fact that he now had powers that he hadn’t even dreamt of in his wildest dream overpowered everything else.

Peter laid down on his bed and turned on his light. He was now as strong as Captain America, a superhero that he and every other person he knew looked up to. The thought made him giddy with excitement. 

He absent mindedly wondered if he had the muscles as the famous Captain America. Peter strode up to the mirror and whipped his science pun t-shirt off.

Holy shit! 

He was ripped, like super ripped. Peter wouldn’t be surprised if he could get a job as a calvin klein model or something. Peter flexed his muscles and smiled as he saw them bulging. Not that Peter could show anyone these, that would make him having powers seem way too obvious, but it was still super cool.

After getting over his physique, which Peter took almost in stride since so many crazy things had happened that day, his phone dinged.

The notification was from some guy responding to a post he made on reddit, so Peter didn’t respond to it, but holding his phone reminded him to check his notifications.

Peter stared guilty at his phone as he saw how many missed calls he had from Aunt May and Uncle Ben. He also checked their text messages. There were many angry and worried ones from May, who was more fond of texting than Ben was.

Next, Peter checked his snaps. There were a ton from Ned, asking him where he was and if he was okay. Peter reassured his friend, giving off some bullshit excuse that he felt sick again and decided to take a day off. It’s not like he could tell Ned, or anyone, the truth. 

Some of Ned’s texts were about the Midtown meme page, which Peter really couldn’t care less about anymore. Compared to gaining superpowers, a couple of memes were inconsequential. Ned did convey that the memes making fun of him had died down, now that everybody thought he was seriously ill because of the fainting incident in the cafeteria. Now only Flash’s gang, especially Kong, kept up the trend of making fun of Peter.

Peter couldn’t help but chuckle. If only they knew that he was far from ill.

Michelle sent him a single snap. It read,  **Missed you on the L-Train loser** . He replied to that text with,  **Will be there tomorrow, missed you too :)** . After Peter impulsively sent that, he almost gagged. ‘Missed you too? How stupid is that!’

Before Peter could dwell on an individual text any longer, he opened the multiple Harry had sent him. After reading them, Peter contemplated why Harry’s dad had agreed to let Peter come to his Oscorp labs. He was ecstatic to see ground breaking science in action, but for someone who hated kids in his work space, it was odd of the guy to just allow Peter in there.

Well looks like Peter was going to figure out how he had gained these powers after all. He was no longer afraid of Norman Osbourne trying to experiment and torture him. He could try, but with Peter’s super strength and spidey sense, he doubted the guy would be successful.

With that thought in mind, Peter settled into a restless sleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I crapped this out. Seriously I put no thought into this. Please give constructive criticism. Or just insult how I wrote this. Seriously I should be ashamed of not proof reading this thing.
> 
> I know that this chapter was focused on the thought process of each character, but the next chapter is going to be more dialogue based. Basically I'm setting up Peter's state of mind for the upcoming chapters. I'm basing his state of mind off of how he was in the beginning of the ultimate spider-man comics. His ego is rising up and he's getting a little corrupted with power, but who wouldn't be when faced with all of a sudden having super powers. Peter's goodness shines through in how he helps his Aunt and Uncle.
> 
> So here is the google doc link for this fic:  
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nu0nstX4791EflXIyepWb5LDTRnwfOtdbJqmSFBZ70E/edit?usp=sharing  
> Feel free to comment on here and see the writing process. In fact, please comment on my individual paragraphs. The more comments, the better.
> 
> PS:  
> Kudos to whoever can guess which song I chose for their opening lyrics to be the title of this chapter. I chose a super easy one so please somebody guess it right.

**Author's Note:**

> So the prologue is meh, I know, but the next chapter is actually good. Please give constructive criticism, I actually like it when people trash my fic for some reason, I don't know why.


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